New Stop WOKE bill targets teacher training programs. But can lawmakers police speech among adults?

The bill comes amidst a massive teacher shortage, and LGBTQ+ advocates say it is clearly intended to keep folks “uneducated” & “in the dark.”

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

It’s the middle of the school year, and Florida is short at least 4,000 teachers, according to data from the Florida Education Association (FEA) released in January. In the report, FEA President Andrew Spar says teachers are “being forced out of the state or the profession entirely due to low pay and untenable working conditions because of bad policy.”

But this hasn’t stopped the Florida legislature from introducing another bill targeting teachers, this time during teacher preparation courses.

Florida’s HB 1291 applies the restrictions on speech from 2022’s “Stop WOKE Act” to teacher training programs, leading Equality Florida to call HB 1291 the “Stop WOKE Teacher Training bill.” Its sponsors gave it the far more banal title, “An act related to educator preparation programs,” which Kara Gross, Legislative Director and Senior Policy Counsel at the ACLU of Florida, argues is “designed to make it harder for the public to track what’s happening.”

HB 1291 would ban the Florida Department of Education from approving teacher preparation courses that..

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