This year marks the pilot year for Florida Assessment of Student Thinking, the new statewide progress monitoring test.

“FAST test will provide additional student by student data to help inform their instruction. This particular tool will help teachers be able to drill down to specific students and look at analysis on how students are testing on specific items and if they are being successful and provide items to reteach,” Superintendent Dr. Chistopher Bernier said.

Accountability, Assessment and Research Director Dr. Matthew Kaye said this is the transitional year for district’s throughout Florida regarding FAST. The three statewide assessment windows include Aug. 15 through Sept. 30, Dec. 5 through Jan. 27 and May 1 through June 2, which is accountability assessment.

Those progress monitoring assessments are intended to provide periodic updates of student progress in terms of achievement level and scale score of students at the time of the assessment, as well as an indication of the student’s level of proficiency in reporting categories. The district is still waiting to learn more regarding if the results will include indication of student progress toward benchmark proficiency.

Kaye provided an example of the FAST sample class level report for schools and teachers. The example was a seventh grade student who received a 299 scale score, which is an achievement level of one out of five. That scale score then breaks down the student’s reading across genres and vocabulary, reading informational text and reading prose and poetry.

Board member Betsy Vaughn asked if there are full practice tests available online for the students.

“No, our teachers and students do not have access to that type of database. This is a secure test. If they teach their standards, teach appropriately, students will learn them. There will be an opportunity for students to demonstrate their ability to know and comprehend through the examination of their ability to deal with those standards,” Bernier said.

He further shared an example of a fifth grade student taking the FAST test, which would be set at the end of the fifth grade benchmark, or standards.

“It would not be surprising to find many of our fifth grade students that are just entering fifth grade not to be fully prepared and getting all level three, four and five of proficient scores,” Bernier said.

He said the goal when you think about outcomes is always proficiency, driving as many students to the proficient level as possible.

“Sometimes it takes a longer time than a year to accomplish. One of the necessary requirements to determine a learning gain is to know where a student previously scored on an exam and give it to them a second year,” Bernier said.

Teachers will receive snap shots of the students’ progress along the way against a standard.

Board member Cathleen Morgan asked how iReady is different from FAST, as students are already feeling stressed about the testing.

Bernier said what the district has now is their own progress monitoring, which is fairly predictive of how students will score on their final test.

“What we need to do this year is continue with new state requirements of FAST and continue with iReady data to make some comparisons. All other outside benchmarks, other than FAST, will be required to go away. This is the only opportunity to have a look at iReady data to tell us and compare to what FAST is telling us,” he said, adding that they will determine if FAST is providing the same information. “We have to utilize this year to look at the progress monitoring systems that are use to ensure we can compare those to FAST.”