The Foundation for Florida’s Future responds to the release of 2025 Florida Assessment of Student Thinking (FAST) results

Patricia Levesque, Executive Director of the Foundation for Florida’s Future, issued the following statement today on year-over-year results from Florida’s statewide student assessments: 

“In every grade and tested subject, Florida students made improvements over the last year. We should celebrate this accomplishment statewide as a final mark of academic achievement for the 2024-2025 school year. 

“While some in Tallahassee have wanted to roll back high expectations for students and schools, the students and schools themselves have once again demonstrated that the Florida model works.  

“More Florida students are achieving a year’s worth of learning in a year’s time. This is exactly what should happen. But the work is not over. Despite this progress, there are still far too many students not achieving on grade–level, and our students’ performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) declined again this year in three of the four tested areas. 

“As we look forward, let’s celebrate this great progress while also pushing ourselves to continue to improve outcomes for students.” 

GET THE FACTS 

• Each year, Florida students participate in the state assessment program, which includes three progress monitoring assessments. The first two assessments are diagnostic and “low stakes,” and the final assessment is summative and “high stakes” with results that count in the school’s accountability system. 
• The Foundation for Florida’s Future measured results from the 2024 Progress Monitoring 3 assessment against the 2025 Progress Monitoring 3 assessment results to understand how students are performing year-over-year. Results are below. 
• Year-to-year comparisons of performance (PM3 to PM3) as shown in the chart below are powerful data points in measuring the progress students make. Whereas, within year comparisons of performance (PM1 to PM3) provide less useful information since they are simply a comparison of student performance after a full year of instruction compared to student performance after several weeks of instruction. 

Florida Assessment of Student Thinking (FAST)—Percent of Students Scoring Grade Level or Higher (Level 3 and Above) on English Language Arts (ELA) and Math