Going From One State Test to Three: What Districts Need to Decide Before Year One

If your state, district, or campus is moving from one spring test to three testing windows, the test itself changes less than you’d think. What really changes is the rhythm of the year: when you learn who needs help, when you stop to re-evaluate, and how much time you have to act.

What actually changes when you go from one test to three?

In Florida, that’s FAST: three progress monitoring windows, with only PM3 carrying school accountability, grade 3 ELA promotion, and grade 10 ELA graduation. In Texas, the Student Success Tool (SST) replaces STAAR in 2027–28 with full-scope BOY, MOY, and EOY assessments in grades 3–8, and only EOY counts. The Center for Assessment calls this design “interim-plus.”

The upside is real. There’s a formal structure for planning the whole year, a built-in moment to re-evaluate, and two intervals to measure progress. But there are tradeoffs, too. Early windows test content students haven’t been taught, students know those windows don’t count, and the model doesn’t reduce testing time on its own. Florida’s 2021 estimate of a 75% cut was a projection, and the Center for Assessment found no through-year program has reduced state testing time.

Which states have made this move?

Florida and Texas are the largest, but they aren’t alone. Here’s where several states stand, based largely on the Center for Assessment’s October 2026 national scan.

The programs that stalled tended to run into cost, staff capacity, and educator trust issues, not a lack of interest in mid-year data. That’s a useful warning for districts: the model works only as well as the local decisions around it.

Florida, in its fifth year of FAST, has the most experience to learn from. This fall, Progress Learning surveyed 656 Florida educators about the shift (Florida FAST Shift Survey, Sept. 28 to Oct. 13, 2026). These findings, along with experiences in other states, point to the decisions and issues that teachers say matter most. 

Before the first window opens

Planning over the summer is key to preparing for the BOY baseline assessments. Three big decisions set up the rest of the year.

Build the year around key standards, not testing windows

Review last spring’s results by standard and choose a key set to track all year. Pay particular attention to standards that you suspect students may struggle with, standards you specifically want to improve from last year, or foundational standards that later learning depends on. Three testing windows let you check those standards at BOY, MOY, and EOY rather than waiting until the following summer. 

What you shouldn’t do is re-pace to the windows. Every window typically tests the full year, so racing to cover more before January only compresses instruction. In our survey of Florida educators, 38% named pacing as their biggest challenge in their new FAST testing, rising to 49% in districts that accelerated pacing. One middle school teacher put it plainly: “We rush through the content and have to go back over everything instead of teaching it the right way the first time.”

Keep your pacing guide focused on spring mastery. Use fall and winter scores as a way to track student trajectory, not as a measure of failure.

Review existing assessments, and decide what to keep

These three state windows can overlap with the diagnostics, benchmarks, and unit tests districts already give. Without a plan, testing can get out of hand. The Center for Assessment, citing Education First research, found that K-8 students in states like Florida and Texas spend more hours on assessment each year than students elsewhere. Before the school year begins, inventory your existing assessments and decide which ones still serve a purpose. 

Texas has made some of these calls already. Under TEA’s HB 8 guidance, district benchmarks in grades 3–8 will no longer be allowed in 2027–28, and other grades will be capped at two before EOY. STAAR Interim Assessments will also end after 2026–27. Classroom formative assessments are still allowed, but the intent is to limit over-testing and retain instructional time.

The right plan depends on what your district already uses. A smaller district without its own interim may find that the state windows fill a gap. A district with a full diagnostic from a vendor has to decide whether to keep both and how to reconcile them. Either way, aim for one agreed-upon data source for each decision so conflicting results don’t undermine educator trust. Nebraska ended its through-year program partly because educators distrusted state results that conflicted with an interim they already used.

Schedule intervention time before results arrive

Fast results only help if students have time and resources to act on them. In Florida, the gap isn’t the data; it’s time. In our survey, 68% named pacing or intervention time as their biggest challenge, while only 15% cited analyzing data fast enough and 6% cited understanding the results. Asked what would help most, respondents chose printable small-group resources (53%) and FAST-format practice assessments (52%), far ahead of data-analysis PD (16%). 

Build intervention time into the master schedule before BOY, with staffing and materials ready. Otherwise, results may arrive before teachers have intervention time and resources in place. Bring federal programs into the same planning cycle, since between-window staffing and materials are often where Title I funds enter the conversation. Confirm what applies with your finance team.

At BOY: use the early results in context

BOY gives you an early look at student needs, months before a traditional spring test ever could. Florida educators use it: 82% of our survey respondents said they use FAST’s 24-hour results at least somewhat effectively, and 42% said the results immediately drive intervention and reteaching.

But BOY results need context. Because the assessment covers the full year’s standards, students will encounter content they haven’t learned yet. Use the results to identify prior-year gaps, form initial intervention groups, and establish a baseline for growth. Florida’s own fact sheet notes that a student below grade level on PM1 or PM2 isn’t necessarily off track.

Brief the board before scores land so they understand what to expect from the first year. Year-one scores will run lower and won’t compare to the old test. Florida’s 2022–23 ELA and math results used provisional cut scores. In Texas, spring 2027 is the last STAAR baseline, and spring 2028 EOY accountability reports will be delayed for standard setting.

At MOY: turn the checkpoint into action

With one spring test, mid-year re-evaluation often happens informally, if at all. Teachers rarely get a built-in reason, or the time, to stop and analyze data in January. MOY creates that moment. Put it on the calendar as protected data time for teams, and decide in the fall what the results will trigger: which students enter or exit intervention, where staffing needs to shift, and which standards get re-taught. Establish these rules before results arrive. Otherwise, teams can lose valuable intervention time deciding what to do instead of acting on the data.

MOY is also when your bubble students, those near a performance cut, come into sharp focus. Identify this cohort early to determine your staffing needs.

Calculate your intervention runway

1. Identify when MOY results will be available.
2. Determine when spring testing begins, including any earlier component, like Texas’s April RLA writing.
3. Count the instructional days between the two dates, minus spring break and other disruptions.
4. Size your bubble cohort based on how many students you can realistically support.

Across all three windows: give students a reason to try

When only the spring assessment counts, some students coast. As one Florida high school teacher told us: “Students are aware that PM1 and PM2 do not determine their graduation status, and therefore, do not try, so the data is often not accurate.”

Raising the stakes isn’t the fix. It can bring back the testing anxiety the model was meant to reduce. Instead, give students a reason to engage and make sure assessment results reflect what they know. Three practices can help: 

• Set growth goals. Give students a way to track their progress between BOY and MOY.
• Follow the two-data-point rule. Pair state assessment results with classroom evidence before making any intervention decisions. 
• Communicate with families. Explain the purpose of each testing window and how results will be used. 

How Progress Learning fits

Progress Learning supports each of these decisions in one web-based K–12 platform:

• Practice that fits your inventory. Standards-aligned practice and assessments in state item formats serve as formative assessments and provide a second data point, not another testing event.
• Structured intervention. Liftoff delivers adaptive Tier 2 and Tier 3 learning paths for grades 2–8 and can turn NWEA MAP RIT scores into those paths.
• Fast follow-through on mid-year data. Standards-level reports, from student to district, help teams track key standards across all three windows and build MOY lists. Quick Click Remediation turns results into reteaching assignments quickly.
• Materials and motivation. Printable teacher resources support small groups, and Galaxy Stars gives students a reason to engage between windows.

Planning between-window practice and intervention for next year? Schedule a demo below to learn how Progress Learning fits into your district’s assessment calendar.