JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – On Wednesday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis celebrated the results of the state’s “first-in-the-nation” progress monitoring system, which, for the third straight year, revealed that students continue to show improvements.
DeSantis was referencing the Florida Assessment of Student Thinking (FAST) progress monitoring assessments, and End-of-Course (EOC) and Science assessments.
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“Florida insists that education be factual, student-focused, and parent empowered,” DeSantis said in a news release. “Florida has led the nation in instituting progress monitoring assessments that allow for teachers and parents to provide real-time interventions that support the long-term success of their students, and our approach has paid off.”
Through progress monitoring, the state said teachers, students, and parents are provided real-time, immediate and actionable data at the beginning, middle, and end of the school year to drive student achievement.
Here are some of the statewide highlights, according to DeSantis:
School Year Improvement
Grades 3-10 English Language Arts (ELA): Performance increased by 21 percentage points from the beginning of the school year (PM1) to the end of the school year (PM3), with 57% of students scoring on grade level or higher in PM3 compared to 36% in PM1.
Grades 3-8 Mathematics: Performance increased by 44 percentage points from PM1 to PM3, with 59% scoring on grade level or higher in PM3 compared to 15% in PM1.
Year-Over-Year Improvement
Grades 3-10 ELA: 57% of students in grades 3-10 scored on or above grade level on the end-of-year progress monitoring assessment (PM3) in ELA in 2025, an increase of 4 percentage points from 2024 and 8 percentage points from 2023.
Mathematics (PM3 and EOCs): 58% of students scored on or above grade level in Mathematics (PM3 and Mathematics End-of-Course (EOC) assessments) in 2025, an increase of 3 percentage points from 2024 and 7 percentage points from 2023.
So, how did our local school district do? Here’s a breakdown:
English Language Arts
For the overall Grades 3-10 stats, St. Johns and Nassau school districts led the state for the percentage of students performing at or above grade level.
St. Johns had 75%, Nassau had 72%.
We had two other area counties that were above the statewide percentage (57%): Clay at 62% and Flagler at 58%.
Our remaining counties:
Alachua: 55%
Columbia: 54%
Union: 54%
Baker: 53%
Bradford: 53%
Duval: 50%
Putnam: 46%
Math
For the overall Grades 3-10 stats, Nassau and St. Johns were once again the top two in the state for the percentage of students at or above grade level.
For Math, Nassau was on top with 80%, followed by St. Johns at 78%.
We had four other area counties that were also above the statewide percentage (59%): Union (66%), Clay (64%), Flagler (61%), and Columbia (60%).
Our remaining counties:
Baker: 56%
Bradford: 56%
Duval: 53%
Alachua: 52%
Putnam: 46%
Last year, there were two area school districts with scores below 50% for both math and ELA: Duval and Putnam. This year, only Putnam is below 50% in both. Duval is right at 50% for ELA, and above 50% for math.
