Millions of Dollars Going to Adequacy, Literacy, and Student Teacher Stipends
Harrisburg, PA, November 12, 2025—Teach Plus Pennsylvania today issued the following statement in response to the state budget passed by the Pennsylvania General Assembly and signed into law by Governor Shapiro:
Teach Plus PA is heartened to see a final state budget after many months of delay, and to see education prioritized in the final product. While the process, which stretched more than four months past the budget deadline, left much to be desired, we are encouraged to see a strong final product that includes big wins for students, with bipartisan agreement around our major education priorities: adequacy funding, student teacher stipends, and early literacy.
“A competitive economy begins with a great public education system,” said Laura Boyce, Teach Plus PA Executive Director. “And we know both from research and from conversations with Pennsylvania students, families, and teachers that a great education system requires adequate funding, a strong and stable educator workforce, and evidence-based reading instruction from well-trained teachers. We applaud Governor Shapiro and legislative leaders for ensuring all these priorities are included in the FY25-26 budget, as we know they will benefit Pennsylvania students and our commonwealth as a whole.”
The final budget includes a second installment of adequacy funding to continue closing the state’s $4.5 billion adequacy gap, and signals that adequacy funding is a non-negotiable priority until full constitutional compliance is achieved. At the current rate, the full state adequacy gap will be closed in seven more years. Governor Shapiro and House Democrats deserve credit for keeping adequacy funding a top priority and ensuring that the full amount proposed by the governor was included in the final budget.
“Our recent report, From Dollars to Difference: How Pennsylvania School Districts Are Putting State Adequacy Investments to Good Use, found that school districts invested the first installment of adequacy dollars in innovative ways to meet the specific needs of their local communities,” said Meghan Amayo, 2nd grade teacher in North Hills School District and Teach Plus Pennsylvania Senior Policy Fellow. “We applaud policymakers for continuing to work to meet their constitutional obligation to fund schools equitably, and look forward to documenting the impact of this second installment of funding to underfunded schools.”
Importantly, the state budget includes $10 million to fund early literacy, along with legislative language requiring teacher training, curriculum, and universal screening in alignment with the science of reading. Implementing comprehensive literacy reforms modeled after those that have made Mississippi a national leader in student reading growth has been a top priority of Teach Plus PA and our partners in the recently-launched Pennsylvania Literacy Coalition.
“Every child deserves to learn to read, and every teacher deserves to be trained to teach reading the right way,” said Michelle Sherman, Reading Specialist in Mechanicsburg Area School District and Teach Plus Pennsylvania Policy Fellow. “We applaud our legislative champions and the House leaders from both parties who ensured this down payment was included—along with our preferred legislative language—and look forward to working with the Pennsylvania Department of Education to ensure strong implementation.”
The state budget also includes $30 million to continue to fund the popular and oversubscribed student teacher stipend program. This represents a 50% increase over last year’s appropriation. We applaud the continued bipartisan support for this program, which has seen funding increase by $10 million per year over three budgets. At the same time, we recognize that this year’s appropriation falls significantly short of full funding, and we continue to advocate for fully funding the program at $50 million, so that it covers every eligible student teacher and can function as intended as an incentive to enter teaching.
Unfortunately, due to the prolonged budget impasse, many underfunded school districts and public charter schools were forced to take out loans with significant interest payments to keep schools running while state funding was frozen. These schools are not expected to be reimbursed for this interest, meaning that money will never reach classrooms and students, and local taxpayers will shoulder this unnecessary expense. As we look ahead to the next state budget cycle, which will kick off in less than three months, we encourage legislative leaders to work in good faith to pass an on-time budget that continues to prioritize education.
We look forward to continuing to partner with Governor Shapiro and legislative leaders to make Pennsylvania the fastest-improving state in early literacy by continuing to make targeted investments in adequacy funding, student teacher stipends, and early literacy reforms in upcoming budgets.
About Teach Plus
The mission of Teach Plus is to empower excellent, experienced, and diverse teachers to take leadership over key policy and practice issues that affect their students’ success. Since 2009, Teach Plus has developed thousands of teacher leaders across the country to exercise their leadership in shaping education policy and improving teaching and learning for students. teachplus.org/pa/
