West Florida News

Of the 3,731 Sarasota County students who took part in the 2022-23 school year FAST, 45.9% met the testing standard while 20.5% exceeded expectations, according to the Florida Department of Education.

Sarasota County's proficiency level in the 2022-23 school year was 66.4%, 12.3% higher than the state's average of 54.1%.

During the 2022-23 school year, Clay County students fared the best on the Algebra portion of the FSA, with 79.4% of them succeeding. Meanwhile Putnam County students did worst on Algebra, with 24.7% of the students passing the test.

There were 45,056 students enrolled in Sarasota County schools in the 2022-23 school year.

According to WalletHub's analysis, Florida is ranked 9th out of 50 states in terms of its public school quality and safety.

In 2022, Florida had more than 2,8 million students enrolled in a total of 4,202 schools. There were 163,558 teachers in the public schools, or roughly one teacher for every 17 students, compared to the national average of 1:16.

While Florida public school students saw gains in math on the 2022-2023 FAST, their performance in ELA was slightly lower than in the previous school year. Math scores remained around 55% success rate, while ELA scores hovered around 50%.

In 2022, Florida replaced the paper-based FSA with the computer-based Florida Assessment of Student Thinking (FAST). Administered three times a year between kindergarten and 10th grade, the FAST is supposed to provide a faster and more individualized feedback on students’ performance than its predecessor.

School Year	Students who met standards (%)	Students who exceeded standards (%)	Total Enrolment
2022-23	45.9%	20.5%	45,056