The new Florida Assessment of Student Thinking - or FAST - is a progress monitoring assessment for reading and math that will be administered in pre-kindergarten through tenth grade, three times per year, to track your student’s progress in learning the required reading and mathematics materials within Florida’s Benchmarks of Excellent Student Thinking (B.E.S.T.) Standards.  Students in fourth through tenth grade will also take the B.E.S.T Writing assessment, once a year, in April. The assessments are taken on a computer. The questions for FAST reading and math get easier or more difficult depending on how the student responds, and each student will see different questions from a common question bank. Each test will provide 35–40 questions that will cover the entire year’s lessons, including material that has not yet been covered by the teacher.

• PM1 – because this administration occurs at the very beginning of the school year, it is designed to provide a baseline score so teachers can track student progress in learning the B.E.S.T. Standards from PM1 to PM2.

• PM2 – by the time of this administration window, students will have had an opportunity to learn the grade-level standards, and this administration will provide a mid-year score to compare to the baseline score from PM1.

• PM3 – this last administration will provide a summative score that will accurately measure student mastery of the B.E.S.T. Standards at the end of the school year. While PM1 and PM2 are for informational purposes only, PM3 will be used for school accountability beginning in the 2023–24 school year.