Whether it was the old FCAT or the test which replaced it — the FSA — students hate high-stakes, standardized testing. This school year, the state of Florida rolled out its latest academic diagnostic tool, the FAST test. In some ways, it’s radically different.
FAST stands for Florida Assessment of Student Thinking. Unlike the FSA, the FAST test is given three times a year between kindergarten and 10th grade. It’s shorter and it’s computer-based, not on paper like the FSA.
“With FAST as opposed to FSA, we have more data points that we can look at to really gauge our students, their understanding, their mastery, what we need to hone in on, what we need to enrich, remediate, and provide intervention on,” said Michelle Sanchez-Perez, principal of West Laboratory School, a K-8 in Coral Gables.
Omar Riaz is the district’s assistant superintendent for data analysis. He said the FAST test is a definite upgrade over the FSA.
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“The purpose of this is that it is able to test students in a shorter amount of time than any paper-based test to be able to arrive at their true final score,” Riaz explained.
“As opposed to waiting until the end of the year, this is the result and then coming up with a plan at the beginning of the year for the following year, we’re able to do it at the current year at that current point in time,” Sanchez-Perez said.
Riaz added, “With the old format, it took us a long time to be able to make decisions based on the data that we received.”
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For example, fifth grader Augusto Santilli knows what he has to work on now — he doesn’t have to wait until next school year.
“In some things, I did well, but some they said that I needed improvement, and they talk to me specifically in which parts I needed improvement,” Augusto said.
In the short term, school grades might go down a bit because student growth can’t be measured from last school year to this year because the kids took a different test last year, and student growth is a major component of a school’s overall grade.
No matter what the test is, students are never going to enjoy high-stakes exams. However, 8th grader Stella Gonzalez has experience now with the FSA and with FAST and prefers the new one.
“I think I would say that the FAST testing is better and I like it more because obviously, you don’t have all that stress and pressure at the end of the year to do better or put in all this work last minute,” Stella said, because it’s given three times a year.
