Original Research by School Decision on Fast Forward High
Fast Forward High is a charter high school in Logan, Utah, serving grades nine through twelve. It operates as its own local education agency, meaning it functions as a school district in its own right, separate from the Logan City School District and the Cache County School District.
The school is relatively small for a four-year high school. Its enrollment is concentrated in the upper grades, with the freshman class being the smallest and the senior class the largest, a shape that suggests the school may have grown its enrollment over time or that some students join after ninth grade. The student body is predominantly white, with a substantial Hispanic population, and smaller numbers of students who are Asian, Black, American Indian or Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, or of two or more races. More than a third of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, indicating that economic need is a meaningful presence in the school community. Data on students with disabilities and English learners was not available in the source data.
The most significant thing to know about Fast Forward High is that no state assessment results are reported for it. This is not a data gap from the source; the state testing dataset contains no entry for this school. Because state testing is a core measure of academic performance, this means that a parent or resident cannot evaluate the school’s academic achievement through the standard metrics used in Utah. The graduation rate was also not available in the data. These are fundamental omissions that make it impossible to compare Fast Forward High’s academic outcomes, proficiency, or student progression to other high schools in Cache County or the state. A parent who wants to understand academic performance here would need to ask the school directly what assessments it uses, how its students perform on them, and what its graduation rate is.
Because the school is a charter, it operates with some autonomy from local district governance. The comparison data that was available sought to position Fast Forward High relative to other districts in Cache County, but the three core metrics — proficiency, graduation rate, and chronic absenteeism — all lacked data for this school, so no comparison could be made.
The school is located in Logan, a mid-sized city that functions as the principal city of the Cache Valley metropolitan area and is home to Utah State University. Logan’s economy is anchored by the university and the Space Dynamics Laboratory, along with a mix of manufacturing, food processing, medical services, agriculture, and retail. The presence of the university brings a large student-age population and a bike-friendly culture; Logan has ranked high nationally for commuters who bike to work. A zero-fare bus system connects the city and its neighbors. Housing in the zip code that covers Fast Forward High is priced somewhat below the state median but above the national median, which places it in a moderately expensive segment of the Utah market. Rents have been rising at a faster annual clip than home values, a signal of tightening rental conditions.
What Fast Forward High offers is a charter high school setting in a university town, with a student body that is economically diverse and skewed toward upperclassmen. But without state testing data, a graduation rate, or any other academic outcome metrics in the available data, the school’s academic profile is essentially opaque to this analysis. A parent considering this school should treat the missing information as the central fact to investigate.
See more original research from School Decision →