TCLI Directory User Guide

Teacher Cancellation Low Income Directory 

User Guide

July 2015
TCLI Directory User Guide

July 2015 i

Contents

Background Information........................................................................................1

The TCLI Directory................................................................................................1

Contact Information...............................................................................................1

How to Register a New State/Territory Liaison User.............................................2

Logging in to the TLCI Web Site for the First Time ...............................................5

Updating the State Contact Info............................................................................8

Updating the TCLI Directory .................................................................................9

Updating or Deleting Existing Individual School Data Entries .............................10

Adding New School or Educational Service Agency Data Entries ......................12

Downloading, Updating and Uploading the Entire State Directory......................13

How the Public Uses the TCLI Directory.............................................................19
TCLI Directory User Guide

Background Information

This guide provides an orientation for new users and a review for experienced users 

who are the State and Territory Teacher Cancellation Low Income Directory (TCLI) 

Contacts.

Each July, the Department of Education (the Department) Federal Student Aid (FSA) 

Liaison sends an e-mail message to the State and Territory Liaisons to remind them to 

update the TCLI Directory for the new school year.

The TCLI Directory

Eligibility requirements for teachers to receive loan cancellation or forgiveness under the 

Federal Perkins Loan (Perkins Loan) Program, the Federal Family Education Loan 

(FFEL) Program, and the William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan (Direct Loan) Program is 

that they must teach at a school or educational service agency serving low-income 

families that is listed in the TCLI Directory. In addition, teaching at a low-income school 

or educational service agency listed in the TCLI Directory is one of the requirements for 

satisfying the service obligation under the Teacher Education Assistance for College 

and Higher Education (TEACH) Grant Program. If a State or Territory does not update 

its list of low-income schools and educational service agencies, Perkins Loan, FFEL, 

and Direct Loan borrowers and TEACH Grant recipients who teach in the state may not 

receive federal program benefits to which they may be entitled.

The Department of Education provides authorized state officials the ability to 

electronically update the list of schools and educational service agencies that serve lowincome families at any time. Although authorized state officials are the only ones who 

can use the “Login” button to update the information, the TCLI Directory may be 

searched by anyone (including post-secondary schools, loan holders and the public) by 

using the “Search” button on the home page. 

Instructions explaining how state and territory officials update the TCLI Directory as well 

as examples of how the public uses the TCLI Directory are included in this guide. 

We appreciate your efforts to keep the TCLI Directory current so that students can 

receive these important benefits.

Contact Information

We hope this information is helpful to you. If you have additional questions about the 

TCLI Directory requirements or procedures, contact the Campus-Based Call Center at 

877/801-7168. Customer service representatives are available Monday through Friday 

from 8:00 A.M. until 8:00 P.M. (ET). You may also e-mail CBFOB@ed.gov.

Grants & Campus-Based Division

Federal Student Aid
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How to Register a New State/Territory Liaison User

1. Access the TCLI Web site at www.TCLI.ed.gov.

2. Scroll down the page and click the Login button. 
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3. Click on the Register button.

4. The New User Registration Form becomes available. (Complete the form as 

described below – see screenshot on next page.)

Complete all fields.

The Reset Phrase is particularly important.

• Choose a question from the drop down list.

• Provide a response that you will remember. The response to this question is 

required in order to complete your registration.

• A User ID and a temporary password will be provided to you by the Federal 

Student Aid TCLI Liaison when the registration process is complete.

• If you forget your Reset Phrase or cannot provide it verbally to the 

Federal Student Aid TCLI Liaison exactly as you typed it, you will be 

asked to re-register and start the process over.

5. After completing the fields, click on the Register button.
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Teacher Cancellation Low Income Directory

Grants and Campus-Based Division

U.S. Department of Education

Union Center Plaza, Room 64F2

830 First Street, NE

Washington, DC 20202-5433
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6. You will receive a confirmation message. Then close the screen by clicking on 

the Close button.

7. After completing the online registration, you must send a letter on your agency 

letterhead to the Grants & Campus-Based Division. The letter must include the 

name and contact information for the person or persons at the agency who will 

access the TCLI Web site on the agency’s behalf. This letter should be sent to:

Teacher Cancellation Low Income Directory

Grants and Campus Based Division

U.S. Department of Education

Union Center Plaza, Room 64F2

830 First Street, NE

Washington, DC 20202-5453

You will then be contacted by the FSA TCLI Liaison who will confirm your Reset 

Phrase response and provide your user ID and temporary password.

Note: Please specify in the letter if the new user will replace a prior state user, 

and/or whether the new user’s access should be in addition to any existing state 

users. 

Logging in to the TLCI Web Site for the First Time

1. Access the TCLI Web site at www.TCLI.ed.gov.

2. Scroll down the page and click on the Login button on the home page.

3. Enter your user ID and temporary password, then click on the Login button.
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4. You will be prompted to change your password.

5. Enter you current (temporary) password

a. Enter your new password and confirm it by typing it again in the “Confirm 

New Password” box.

Note: The password must contain at least two alphabetic characters, one 

numeric character or one special character and be at least eight (8) characters 

long.

b. Click on the “Change Password” box.
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6. After completing the change to a permanent password, the Home/Setup page of 

the TCLI Web site is displayed. You will have access only to your state.

The Year display will default to the current year. To work with a different year, 

use the drop down box to select the year you want, then click on the Change 

Year button.
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Updating the State Contact Info

The State Contact Info selection allows you to update the primary and secondary 

State/Territory contact responsible for updating the TCLI Directory. The primary contact 

is the person the Department will contact with new and updated information concerning 

the TCLI Directory. When that duty changes in the State/Territory office, the information 

must be updated in the TCLI Directory.
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Updating the TCLI Directory

Your state’s TCLI Directory must be updated each year with all low income schools and 

educational service agencies for that year. You can add/delete/and update specific 

schools and educational service agencies individually for any of the years (see page 

11). Please note that the prior year list does not roll over into the new year. We 

recommend that if you do not have an automated system within your procedures, that 

you download the prior year list, update it, and then upload it into the new year (see 

page 13). If you are developing automated procedures, the allowable format is 

available online through a link on the Upload/Download page:

 

You can update your state’s TCLI Directory by:

• Updating or deleting a school or educational service agency in the Directory one 

at a time,

• Adding a new school or educational service agency one at a time, or

• Downloading your state’s list, updating it, then uploading it back to the TCLI 

Directory (Recommended).
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Updating or Deleting Existing Individual School Data Entries

1. Click on the TCLI Directory link on the Menu located on the left side of the page. 

To update or delete just one or a few schools and educational service agencies, 

you can narrow your search by entering data in the search fields.

To see your state’s entire current list, click the Search button. 

2. Your state’s entire list of schools and educational service agencies currently in 

the TCLI Directory will be displayed.

Click on the Select button to the right of the school you want to update or delete. 

The data fields for that school or educational service agency will be displayed.
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3. Update them as needed, then click the Save button. If you want to delete the 

selected school or educational service agency, click the Delete button.

4. A confirmation message will be displayed.
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Adding New School or Educational Service Agency Data Entries

1. Click on the TCLI Directory link on the Menu located on the left side of the page. 

The Search TCLI Directory screen is displayed. Click the Add New button. 

2. A blank School or Educational Service Agency Information screen will be 

displayed. Complete the information and click the Save button.
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3. A confirmation message is displayed.

Downloading, Updating and Uploading the Entire State Directory

An efficient way to review your state’s list of schools and educational service agencies 

data is to:

• download the file, 

• convert it to an Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, 

• review, update, and add information,

• convert the updated spreadsheet to a tab-delimited text file, and

• upload the file back to the TCLI Directory. 
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Step-by-step instructions are provided below:

1.

a. Click on the Upload/Download link on the Menu located on the left side of 

the page. The Upload/Download screen is displayed.

b. Click on the Download File button.

2. Save the file to a place on your hard drive where you can find it.
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3. Note the naming convention. The file downloaded in this example is the Missouri 

2013 TCLI file in text format (TCLI-MO-2013.txt).

4. Convert the downloaded text file to a Microsoft Excel file.

a. Using Microsoft Excel, open the downloaded file. 

b. If you don’t see your file, ensure that “All Files” is selected.

c. Microsoft Excel will recognize that the file is not an Excel spreadsheet and will 

require some selections to be made.

d. Select Delimited. Then click on Next.
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e. At the next screen, check the box for Tab Delimiters. Then click on Finish.

f. Your current list of schools and educational service agencies in the TCLI 

Directory is now in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.
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5. Update, add, and delete data as needed. Save the file as a Microsoft Excel 

spreadsheet as a backup until you have completed the upload.

6. With the updated spreadsheet open, save the file as a Tab-Delimited.txt file. 

Name the file appropriately so you know what it is.

You may receive a warning that the file may contain features incompatible with 

text. Click ‘yes’ to keep it in the selected Text (Tab delimited) format. 
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7. Upload the file to the TCLI Directory. 

a. Click the Upload/Download link on the menu located on the left side of the 

page. The Upload/Download page is displayed.

b. From the Upload/Download main screen click on the Browse button to 

select the file you have updated and now want to upload.

c. When you’ve selected the appropriate file, click on the Upload File button.

d. When the file is finished uploading, a message indicating a successful 

upload will be displayed.
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How the Public Uses the TCLI Directory

The TCLI home page (www.tcli.ed.gov) is available to everyone. The public cannot 

update school and educational service agency data for a state, but can use the Web 

site to research state and school and educational service agency information.

State Contact Information

By clicking on the State Contact Information link on the home page, the public can 

view the listing of all of the State/Territory contacts for the TCLI Directory as shown 

below.
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Search the TCLI Directory

By clicking on the Search button on the home page, the public can search for schools

and educational service agencies listed in the TCLI Directory. 
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Example: On line search results for Alaska 2013-2014

Users must select a state and the year and then have the option to also narrow their 

search to a specific school or Educational Service Agency or a specific location. Help is 

provided on the screen. There is a link for additional search help that provides details 

for narrowing search parameters.
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As shown below, the results of this search for all schools in Alaska for 2013-2014 

results in a list of 351 schools and Educational Service Agencies listed in alphabetical 

order.
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Download Reports

Public users can choose to search the TCLI Directory online or download a report 

based on state and year in either a Tab-Delimited or Microsoft Excel version.
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Example: Download Tab-Delimited file

A Tab-Delimited file is normally saved to a hard drive and then imported into a software 

application that reads and formats the data.
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Example: Download Microsoft Excel file

A Microsoft Excel download captures the data within a Microsoft Excel Worksheet 

where it is ready to be formatted by the user.