CFDA Number: 84.815
Program Type: Discretionary/Competitive Grants

DANTES assists eligible members of the armed forces to obtain certification or licensing as elementary school teachers, secondary school teachers, or vocational or technical teachers and to become highly qualified teachers. The program also helps these individuals find employment in high-need local education agencies (LEAs) or charter schools.

This program supports the highly successful work of the Department of Defense's Troops-to-Teachers program. The program was established by the Department of Defense in 1994 to help improve public school education by providing funds to recruit, prepare, and support former members of the military services as teachers in high-poverty schools.

Under this program, the Secretary of Education transfers funds to the Department of Defense for the Defense Activity for Non-Traditional Education Support (DANTES) to provide assistance, including stipends of up to $5,000, to eligible members of the armed forces so that they can obtain certification or licensing as elementary school teachers, secondary school teachers, or vocational/technical teachers and become highly qualified teachers by demonstrating competency in each of the subjects they teach. In addition, the program helps these individuals find employment in high-need local educational agencies (LEA's) or charter schools. A "high need LEA" is defined as an LEA that has a poverty rate of at least 20 percent or at least 10,000 poor children and has a high percentage of teachers teaching out of field or with emergency credentials. In lieu of the $5,000 stipends, DANTES may pay $10,000 bonuses to participants who agree to teach in high-poverty schools. A "high-poverty school" is defined as a school where at least 50 percent of the students are from low-income families or the school has a large percentage of student who qualify for assistance under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

Members of the armed forces who wish to receive the program's assistance for placement as an elementary or secondary school teacher must have a baccalaureate or advance degree, and their last period of service in the armed forces must have been honorable. In selecting members of the armed forces to participate in the program, the Department of Defense must give priority to those members who have educational or military experience in science, mathematics, special education, or vocational/technical subjects and who agree to seek employment as teachers in a subject area compatible with their backgrounds.