It is charged with serving its member schools and registered officials by establishing policies and adopting contest rules that emphasize the educational values of interscholastic athletics, promote safe and sportsmanlike competition, and provide uniform standards for all interscholastic levels of competition.

"[3] The General Assembly's action in 1972 thus established the legislature's right to intervene in the PIAA's affairs, a precursor to other later interventions.

[5] The PAOC is a 17-member oversight committee consisting of administrators, coaches and legislators to review what some had seen as the PIAA's unrestricted authority.

The new law also called for several reforms including switching to a competitive process for selecting sites for championship games, eliminating the restitution rule, which required school districts that lose court cases against the PIAA to pay the associations legal fees and that persons involved in interscholastic athletics be provided equality of opportunity and treatment without discrimination.

The PIAA divides its member schools' counties into 12 geographical districts for the purpose of state championship competition.

While this is a general outline of the districts, there are some notable exceptions: Traditionally for state championship competition for team sports, Pennsylvania is divided into Eastern and Western regions.

For example, boys' volleyball, the sport with the smallest number of participating schools, only has a AA or AAA classification.

By comparison, boys' basketball, which has the largest number of participating schools, has A, AA, AAA, AAAA, AAAAA, AAAAAA classifications.

The number of A's signify how large or small the school is; Class A is the smallest classification while AAAAAA is the largest.

The PIAA made the decision to expand to six classes in Football, as well as Boys and Girls basketball, baseball and softball.

In 2006, the PIAA announced that they had refused Hershey's application for a contract extension to host the basketball championships at Giant Center.

In 2022, PIAA approved the use of the athletic facilities of Cumberland Valley School District as the new home for state sporting championships.