The streamlined process makes intern certificates available to future teachers at no cost.
HARRISBURG, Pa. – the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) has announced that aspiring educators can now receive an Intern Certificate for free, enabling them to enter the classroom and teach for up to three years while taking education classes on the path to earning their full teaching certification. The free Intern Certificate opens up an alternative path into teaching careers for Pennsylvanians who have already earned a bachelor’s degree in another field and want to take their knowledge and skills to use it to help educate future generations and puts more teachers into Pennsylvania classrooms, faster.
“Pennsylvania’s educator workforce shortage is a multi-faceted challenge that requires innovation, creativity, and strategic thinking to overcome,” said Secretary of Education Dr. Khalid N. Mumin. “By providing prospective educators who have prior job experience and subject area expertise a free alternative to enter the classroom prior to certification, we enable them to earn as they learn while helping schools fill open classroom jobs with qualified, passionate candidates.”
The Shapiro administration is taking action to address the education workforce shortage and make it a little bit easier for Pennsylvanians to become a teacher, because creating real opportunities for children starts with having enough well-qualified, well-paid teachers.
Individuals with an Intern Certificate have passed the content test demonstrating that they have the knowledge to teach in a content area and must only complete their professional core education work and student teaching before becoming fully certified. Interns have three-year certificates, giving them the chance to complete their student teaching while working and getting paid as a teacher of record.
Previously, individuals would pay $200 for an Intern Certificate, and then another $200 when they completed their educator prep program and applied for an Instructional Certificate. By waiving the fee for the Intern Certificate, PDE hopes to incentivize more individuals to pursue this option and encourage more schools to hire interns to address their immediate staffing needs.
Intern Certificates are an alternative to Emergency Permits, and PDE has worked with educator preparation programs to expand their teacher intern programs and reduce the number of individuals entering the classroom via Emergency Permit.
There are currently more than 8,000 teachers working under Emergency Permits and those numbers continue to rise. In 2022-23, Pennsylvania saw a 27% increase in Emergency Permits. Intern Certificates place more highly qualified teachers in the classroom and provide pathways for Emergency-permitted teachers to attain full certification.
This new offering builds on PDE’s efforts to recruit and retain teachers in Pennsylvania, as it works collaboratively with leaders in the education field to ensure there is a robust pipeline of educators in place to provide a high-quality education to learners of all ages across the Commonwealth. Other efforts include: reducing teacher certification processing times by more than ten weeks, creating a new Career and Technical Education (CTE) program in Education for high school students, awarding $1.5 million in grant funding to colleges and universities to bolster the Commonwealth’s next generation of special educators, eliminating the Basic Skills Assessment to become an educator, creating and expanding the Student Teacher Support Program to provide a stipend to student teachers, allowing individuals authorized to work in the United States to earn certification and serve as educators in the Commonwealth, and more.
For more information, visit: www.pa.gov/en/agencies/education.html.
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