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Florida

Verified against current sources (2026-05-08) Cite this page ↓

Florida does not offer a bilingual education credential; ELD/ESL is available both as a standalone license and as an add-on endorsement. SEI training is not mandated for all teachers. As of 2021, 9.5% of public-school students are classified English Learners (NCES). Re-verified against current SEA sources on 2026-05-08.

9.5%
classified ELs (2021-10-01)
view trend →
ELD
credential types offered

Credentials

Bilingual education

Not offered.

Florida has no separate bilingual education certification or endorsement. Bilingual program delivery is staffed by ESOL-credentialed teachers, often paired with a World Language certification (e.g., Spanish K-12) where appropriate.

ESOL Endorsement

  • Standalone certification
  • Add-on endorsement
Approved program
Unknown
Coursework
Required
Practicum
Unknown
Subject test
Required

Florida offers two ESOL credentials: (1) the standalone ESOL K-12 certification under Rule 6A-4.0245 (FTCE 047 ESOL K-12 subject area exam, or major in ESOL); and (2) the ESOL academic endorsement under Rule 6A-4.0244, which requires 15 semester hours across five areas (Methods, Curriculum and Materials, Cross-Cultural Communication, Applied Linguistics, Testing and Evaluation) — or a Florida district's approved inservice add-on program. The State Board adopted new ESOL endorsement standards on 2025-08-20 under Rule 6A-4.02451 (effective Sep 2025); approved programs must submit revised matrices to FLDOE by 2026-06-01. No language-proficiency exam (LOTE) is required.

Sheltered English Instruction (SEI)

Not mandated for all teachers.

Florida operates under the LULAC v. State Board of Education Consent Decree (1990-08-14), which mandates ESOL training scaled by teacher category: Category I (Language Arts/English/Reading/Elementary/ESE serving ELLs) needs the full ESOL endorsement (15 SH or 300 inservice points) or FTCE 047 plus 2 ESOL courses; Category II (math/science/social studies/computer literacy) needs 1 course or 60 inservice points; Category III (fine arts/electives, SLPs, OT/PT) needs 1 course or 18 inservice points; Category IV (school-based administrators and counselors) needs 1 course. Training is conditional on serving ELLs in covered roles, so this is not equivalent to the AZ/CA/MA model where SEI is mandated for all teachers regardless of student population.

State policy signals

Seal of Biliteracy

Recognition for graduating students proficient in English plus another language.

Adopted in 2016.

Source: sealofbiliteracy.org (opens in a new tab)

ELP assessment

Annual English Language Proficiency test used for EL identification and reclassification.

ACCESS for ELLs · WIDA Consortium member.

Source: wida.wisc.edu (opens in a new tab)

History of licensure

Dated policy and verification events shaping this state's EL teacher credentials.

  1. LULAC v. State Board of Education Consent Decree entered

    The federal consent decree settling LULAC v. SBE established Florida's framework for serving ELs and trained teachers, including the category-conditional ESOL training requirements (Categories I–IV) that remain the operative SEI-style mandate in Florida. The decree is the foundation for Rules 6A-4.0244 (endorsement) and 6A-4.0245 (standalone K-12 certification).

    fldoe.org (opens in a new tab)

  2. Florida adopts the State Seal of Biliteracy

    Florida Statute § 1003.432 (HB 7029, 2016) authorizes a Gold and Silver Seal of Biliteracy on the high-school diploma for graduates demonstrating proficiency in English plus one or more world languages.

    sealofbiliteracy.org (opens in a new tab)

  3. EPAA 29(100) document analysis (Leider, Colombo & Nerlino, 2021)

    Leider, Colombo & Nerlino published in Education Policy Analysis Archives 29(100) a comprehensive document analysis of every state and DC's bilingual, ELD/ESL, and SEI teacher-credentialing requirements, professional teaching standards mentions, and EL-percentage figures, based on primary SEA sources collected October–December 2019. The 2019 coding of Florida's EL-credentialing landscape is preserved as a temporally-anchored research baseline against which the catalog's later verifications are framed.

    doi.org (opens in a new tab)

  4. State Board adopts 2025 Florida Teacher Standards for ESOL Endorsement

    The State Board adopted Rule 6A-4.02451 establishing new ESOL endorsement standards (effective September 2025), replacing the 2010 standards. The five-strand structure (Culture, Applied Linguistics, Methods of Teaching, Curriculum and Materials, Testing and Evaluation) is preserved; approved programs must submit revised matrices to FLDOE by 2026-06-01.

    fldoe.org (opens in a new tab) · fldoe.org (opens in a new tab)

Sources

  1. [1] Florida Department of Education (opens in a new tab) — retrieved 2019-11-15 (via Leider et al. 2021)
  2. [2] Leider, Colombo & Nerlino (2021), EPAA 29(100). Tables 2-5 + Appendix A. (opens in a new tab) — retrieved 2019-11-15 (via Leider et al. 2021)
  3. [3] FLDOE — Florida Teacher Standards for ESOL Endorsement (Rule 6A-4.02451 hub; 2025 standards adopted 2025-08-20, effective Sep 2025) (opens in a new tab) — retrieved 2026-05-08
  4. [4] FLDOE — 2025 Florida Teacher Standards for English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) Endorsement (PDF; five strands: CU, AL, MT, CM, TE) (opens in a new tab) — retrieved 2026-05-08
  5. [5] Rule 6A-4.0244, F.A.C. — ESOL endorsement specialization requirements (15 SH across five areas) (opens in a new tab) — retrieved 2026-05-08
  6. [6] Rule 6A-4.0245, F.A.C. — ESOL K-12 standalone certification specialization (major or FTCE 047) (opens in a new tab) — retrieved 2026-05-08
  7. [7] FLDOE — LULAC v. State Board of Education Consent Decree (1990; ESOL training requirements by teacher category) (opens in a new tab) — retrieved 2026-05-08
  8. [8] Rule 6A-5.065, F.A.C. — Florida Educator Accomplished Practices (current; last amended 2023-08-22; cultural/linguistic/diversity references present, no explicit EL mention) (opens in a new tab) — retrieved 2026-05-08
  9. [9] NCES Digest of Education Statistics 2023, Table 204.20 — Florida Fall 2021: 269,534 ELs (9.5%) (opens in a new tab) — retrieved 2026-05-08
  10. [10] Seal of Biliteracy — Florida state page (adopted 2016; F.S. § 1003.432) (opens in a new tab) — retrieved 2026-05-08
  11. [11] WIDA Consortium — member states (Florida administers ACCESS for ELLs) (opens in a new tab) — retrieved 2026-05-08
  12. [12] FTCE ESOL K-12 (047) test page — Pearson/NESINC, the K-12 ESOL subject area examination (opens in a new tab) — retrieved 2026-05-08

Cite this page

Site content is published under CC BY 4.0. When citing a fact from this page, please cite both projectcert and the original Leider et al. (2021) paper the dataset extends.

APA
projectcert. (2026, May 8). Florida EL teacher certification. https://projectcert.org/states/fl/
Leider, C. M., Colombo, M. W., & Nerlino, E. (2021). Decentralization, teacher quality, and the education of English learners: Do state education agencies effectively prepare teachers of ELs? Education Policy Analysis Archives, 29(100). https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.29.5279
BibTeX
@misc{projectcert_fl_2026,
  author  = {{projectcert}},
  title   = {{Florida EL teacher certification}},
  year    = {2026},
  url     = {https://projectcert.org/states/fl/},
  urldate = {2026-05-08},
  note    = {Last verified 2026-05-08}
}
@article{leider2021decentralization,
  author  = {Leider, Christine M. and Colombo, Michaela W. and Nerlino, Erika},
  title   = {{Decentralization, teacher quality, and the education of English learners: Do state education agencies effectively prepare teachers of ELs?}},
  journal = {Education Policy Analysis Archives},
  volume  = {29},
  number  = {100},
  year    = {2021},
  doi     = {10.14507/epaa.29.5279}
}

See the methodology for how these data were collected, or the glossary for term definitions.