The Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA) has announced that the student application for the 2026-27 PA Student Teacher Support Program will be available on pheaa.org/StudentTeacher on the afternoon of Thursday, April 16. PHEAA administers the program for the Commonwealth.
The program provides $10,000 to eligible student teachers and up to $2,500 to cooperating teachers who will be working with and mentoring student teachers throughout the student teacher experience. Program recipients must commit to teaching in Pennsylvania for 3 years following the completion of their teaching certification.
The PA Student Teacher Support Program has been extremely valuable to future teachers. There were 3,547 applications received for the 2025-26 academic year, although funding was only available to support 2,300 student teachers.
Anyone who is planning to student teach or is currently in the process of applying for a student teacher position for 2026-27 should apply for this grant.
“At PHEAA, we look to address the needs of college-bound students,” said Senator Wayne D. Fontana, PHEAA Board Chairman. “We need qualified teachers in the Commonwealth and it quickly became apparent that costs related to student teaching were hindering that. We are proud to administer a program that addresses the needs of our future educators.”
Pennsylvania student teachers who will be student teaching in the fall and spring semesters of the 2026-27 academic year should prepare now to apply. Applicants will be required to provide the following information on the application:
- Social Security Number (SSN)
- Professional Personnel ID (PPID)—optional
- Full Name
- Date of Birth
- Address
- Phone Number
- Institution of Higher Education
- Semester of Student Teaching (fall, spring, or both)
- Program Level (bachelor, graduate, post-baccalaureate)
- Certification Area
Student teacher placement information is not required when submitting the student application. Selection will be conducted on a first-come, first-served basis based upon the date and time when PHEAA receives a complete student application. Completed applications can be submitted via the document upload feature in the PHEAA Account Access Portal.
“We have a teacher shortage crisis that we must continue to address. The Student Teacher Support Program continues to be an important part of bringing more teachers into the pipeline to solve for that shortage,” said Senator Vincent Hughes, PHEAA Board Member and sponsor of the Senate version of the bill. “Since this bipartisan program launched, we knew the stipends would be a tremendous help to student teachers who often struggle to cover everyday costs while essentially working full-time for no pay. We are continuing to fight for more funding so every eligible student teacher in Pennsylvania has access to a stipend.”
