A Primer on Florida FAST:
What It Is, How It Works, and What We’re Learning
Originally published November 2025 · Updated September 2026
What Is Florida FAST?
The Florida Assessment of Student Thinking (FAST) is Florida’s statewide coordinated screening and progress-monitoring system for English Language Arts (ELA) Reading and Mathematics.
FAST was first administered during the 2022–23 school year and is aligned with Florida’s Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking (B.E.S.T.) Standards.
For grades 3–10 ELA Reading and grades 3–8 Mathematics, students participate in three progress-monitoring administrations during the school year:
- PM1: Beginning of the year
- PM2: Middle of the year
- PM3: End of the year
Florida also administers FAST Reading and Mathematics in the early grades, with the statewide FAST program extending from VPK through grade 10 in ELA Reading and VPK through grade 8 in Mathematics.
The three-administration structure allows Florida to measure performance at multiple points rather than relying exclusively on an end-of-year assessment.
How Does FAST Work?
For grades 3–10 ELA Reading and grades 3–8 Mathematics, FAST assessments are computer-adaptive. The testing system selects items that meet the assessment blueprint while adjusting item difficulty based on how a student responds.
The three administrations serve different purposes.
PM1 provides information near the beginning of the school year.
PM2 provides another measure during the year.
PM3 measures end-of-year performance and serves as the summative assessment for these grades and subjects.
FAST results for grades 3–10 are reported through Florida’s reporting system within 24 hours of a student completing the assessment, giving schools access to information much sooner than was typical under older end-of-year testing models. Parents can access results through Florida’s Family Portal.
This combination of multiple checkpoints and faster reporting is a defining feature of Florida’s approach.
When Is FAST Administered?
Florida establishes testing windows for each progress-monitoring period while giving districts and schools flexibility to schedule testing within those windows.
For the 2025–26 school year, grades 3–10 ELA Reading and grades 3–8 Mathematics were scheduled as follows:
- PM1: August 11–September 26, 2025
- PM2: December 1, 2025–January 23, 2026
- PM3: May 1–29, 2026
The windows represent the period during which schools may schedule assessments—not the amount of time individual students spend testing.
For grades 3–10, FAST assessments are administered in one session on one day. In 2025–26, recommended session lengths ranged from 80 to 100 minutes for PM1 and PM2 and from 100 to 120 minutes for PM3, depending on grade and subject.
What Does FAST Measure?
FAST is aligned to Florida’s B.E.S.T. Standards and provides information about student performance throughout the school year.
Importantly, PM1, PM2, and PM3 shouldn’t simply be interpreted as three identical end-of-year tests.
Students take PM1 near the beginning of the year, when they have not yet received a full year’s instruction. PM2 captures performance later in the instructional cycle, and PM3 measures performance at the end of the year.
That context matters when interpreting changes across the three administrations.
Florida publishes PM1-to-PM3 comparisons as part of its statewide reporting, allowing educators and leaders to examine how student performance changes over the course of the school year.
What Do the Latest Results Show?
By 2026, Florida had several years of FAST implementation behind it, making it possible to look beyond the initial rollout.
Florida’s 2025–26 FAST results continue to provide PM1-to-PM3 comparisons for both ELA and Mathematics at the state, district, and school levels. The state also publishes year-over-year PM3 results, giving educators and policymakers another way to examine performance over time.
The previous year’s statewide results illustrate how much performance can change between the beginning and end of the instructional year. In 2025, the percentage of students in grades 3–10 performing at Level 3 or above in ELA increased from 36% at PM1 to 57% at PM3. In grades 3–8 Mathematics, performance increased from 15% at PM1 to 59% at PM3.
Those increases should not automatically be interpreted as a causal effect of FAST itself. Students receive months of instruction between PM1 and PM3, and beginning-of-year assessments occur before students have been taught all of the year’s content.
What the results do demonstrate is the kind of within-year performance information Florida’s system is designed to make visible.
What Can Other States Learn From Florida?
Florida’s experience demonstrates what a statewide progress-monitoring model can look like at scale.
Several characteristics stand out:
- Assessment occurs at defined points across the school year rather than only at the end.
- Computer-adaptive testing is used for FAST ELA Reading and Mathematics.
- Results for grades 3–10 FAST are available through the state’s reporting system within 24 hours.
- State, district, and school results can be compared across progress-monitoring periods.
- PM3 still provides the end-of-year measure used within Florida’s statewide assessment and accountability system.
Florida also illustrates an important limitation of any through-year model: three checkpoints are still checkpoints.
There are weeks and months of instruction between PM1, PM2, and PM3. That’s where classroom evidence becomes especially important.
The Instructional Opportunity Between FAST Checkpoints
FAST gives Florida educators important information at the beginning, middle, and end of the school year.
But students are learning—and showing what they understand—every day in between.
Assignments, formative checks, open-ended responses, practice activities, and other classroom work can provide evidence that helps teachers respond before the next statewide assessment window arrives.
That’s where Classwork can complement a system like FAST.
Classwork helps turn everyday instructional work into useful, standards-aligned evidence. Teachers can create or convert activities, collect auto-scored and open-ended responses, and use reporting to understand student performance while instruction is happening.
At the school and district levels, that evidence can also help leaders identify patterns across classrooms, schools, and standards.
FAST provides statewide checkpoints. Classwork helps make more of the learning between those checkpoints visible.
Conclusion
Florida FAST represents one of the country’s most established statewide approaches to progress monitoring.
Since its first administration in 2022–23, Florida has built a system that measures student performance at three points during the year, reports results quickly, and provides state, district, school, teacher, parent, and student stakeholders with information about performance and progress.
Florida’s experience also reinforces a larger lesson about through-year assessment.
Changing when statewide assessments occur can provide educators with more timely checkpoints. But a more continuous understanding of student learning requires connecting those checkpoints with the evidence students generate during everyday instruction.
FAST shows where students are at key points during the year. Classwork helps educators see more of what happens in between.
See More of the Learning Between Assessment Windows
See how Classwork helps districts connect everyday classroom evidence with broader assessment data—giving educators greater visibility into student learning throughout the year.
This article is part of the Classwork.com Through-Year Assessment Series.
References
Florida Department of Education. Florida Assessment of Student Thinking (FAST) Assessments.
FAST Assessments
Florida Department of Education. (2025). 2025–26 FAST Grades 3–10 ELA Reading and Grades 3–8 Mathematics Fact Sheet.
2025–26 FAST Grades 3–10 Fact Sheet
Florida Department of Education. (2025). 2025–26 Statewide Assessment Schedule.
2025–26 Statewide Assessment Schedule
Florida Department of Education. (2026). Florida Assessment of Student Thinking and B.E.S.T. Assessment Results.
2026 Florida Statewide Assessment Results
Florida Department of Education. (2025). Commissioner Kamoutsas Celebrates Accomplishments from 2025.
2025 FAST Performance Results
Quick Summary & Common Questions
What is Florida FAST?
The Florida Assessment of Student Thinking (FAST) is Florida’s statewide coordinated screening and progress-monitoring system for ELA Reading and Mathematics. FAST is administered three times during the school year and is aligned to Florida’s B.E.S.T. Standards.
Which students take FAST?
Florida’s broader FAST program includes VPK through grade 10 ELA Reading and VPK through grade 8 Mathematics. The grades 3–10 ELA Reading and grades 3–8 Mathematics assessments are computer-adaptive statewide assessments administered at PM1, PM2, and PM3.
What do PM1, PM2, and PM3 mean?
PM stands for Progress Monitoring. PM1 occurs near the beginning of the school year, PM2 occurs around the middle, and PM3 occurs at the end. PM3 serves as the summative assessment for grades 3–10 ELA Reading and grades 3–8 Mathematics.
Is Florida FAST computer-adaptive?
Yes. FAST ELA Reading for grades 3–10 and FAST Mathematics for grades 3–8 are computer-adaptive. Item difficulty adjusts based on student responses while the assessment continues to meet its required blueprint.
How quickly are FAST results available?
For grades 3–10 FAST assessments, results are reported in Florida’s reporting system within 24 hours after a student completes testing. Parents can access results through the Family Portal.
How can Classwork complement FAST?
FAST provides formal progress-monitoring checkpoints during the school year. Classwork helps educators collect and analyze standards-aligned evidence from everyday classroom work between those checkpoints, providing another layer of information teachers and leaders can use to understand student learning.