An alternative college entrance exam

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Up next: a new kind of college test based on ancient ideas

It’s called the Classic Learning Test or CLT. It measures skills usually highlighted in classical education programs. It’s gaining traction as an alternative to the ACT or SAT, and several states are considering it.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: On March 11, Oklahoma’s House of Representatives passed a bill that would let students use CLT scores to qualify for in-state scholarships.

But, how does the CLT compare to other standardized tests?

WORLD’s Anna Johansen Brown has the story.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN: Sarah Catherine Grace took the SAT twice in high school. Then she applied to New College Franklin, a private Christian university in Tennessee. And learned she’d need to take a different entrance exam: the Classic Learning Test.

SARAH CATHERINE GRACE: But the nice thing was that I had gone through a lot of this with my schooling, because classically educated and kind of was how it progressed anyway, so I just kind of had to brush up on a few things.

New College Franklin is one of more than 280 universities that accept the CLT. The test first rolled out in 2015 and covers subjects like reading, writing, and arithmetic. But unlike modern standardized tests, the CLT uses classic texts from authors like Charles Dickens and Voltaire.

GRACE: I think in the SAT, it was a lot of like, we just kind of picked this passage, or it was very generic, whereas here it was a lot of primary sources of philosophers and different correspondence between two main political figures.

That emphasis on critical thinking is part of the reason Arizona Christian University accepts the CLT. Here’s Dean of ACU’s College of Arts and Humanities, Adam Rasmussen:

ADAM RASMUSSEN: That differentiates them from students who maybe have had more bland education that's more one size fits all across the nation type of education. And maybe that education is not exploring some of the greater questions that we explore at our school … what does it mean to be human? What does it mean to flourish?

Rasmussen says public education doesn’t usually ask those fundamental questions. About a decade ago, the SAT and ACT began using Common Core Standards … which set benchmarks for student progress. But Rasmussen points out an annual college dropout rate of more than 30%. And says Common Core-based assessments aren’t reliable indicators of student success.

RASMUSSEN: So when we say we’ve got a system that is creating people that are college ready, I would question that. I would say, maybe they’re not ready for college.

Problems with modern standardized tests existed long before Common Core benchmarks.

PEPPER STETLER: SATs and ACTs grew out of intelligence tests, basically starting around the late 19 teens and into the 1920s.

Pepper Stetler is the author of A Measure of Intelligence, a book exploring the history of IQ tests.

STETLER: In World War I, there were efforts to create a kind of intelligence test that could be standardized and given to thousands and thousands of army recruits.

Stetler says some standardized tests ignore an important distinction.

STETLER: And intellectual capacity is kind of like a biologically ingrained trait, whereas education is like testing whether you have been to school and you have received a quality education and those things aren’t necessarily the same.

The CLT might be a better metric of what classically educated students have learned. But it could put some students at a disadvantage.

KEITH NIX: If they've gone to a school, public or not, where they haven't been asked to read difficult texts and do a lot of writing and thinking, critical thinking, reading, writing. Then yeah, I think the CLT is going to feel very tough.

Keith Nix serves on the advisory board for the CLT. He’s also the head of Veritas School in Richmond, Virginia. It’s a K through 12 program he says pairs well with the CLT assessment.

NIX: Our students don’t need to do a lot of independent study just to take a test. They can just come to school every day and read what we read and do the writing, do what's expected of them.

According to the creators of the CLT, a new standardized test might not only benefit homeschooled and private school students, it could eventually influence what gets taught at the public school level. But that depends on whether states decide to teach to a classically-based test. CLT Chief Financial Officer Noah Tyler:

NOAH TYLER: But the College Board has enjoyed a position of prominence. They have been the silent shadow department of education, like, curriculum setter.

That might explain why the College Board—which administers the SAT—has targeted the CLT. Last year, the College Board issued a statement saying the CLT hasn’t been around long enough to be reliable. The board also said the study comparing the CLT to the SAT did not meet industry standards.

Tyler says that at the legislative level, the Board has exercised some leverage.

TYLER: College Board has a lobbying budget that’s north of a million dollars.

According to RealClearInvestigations, the board spent around $830,000 on lobbying in 2023. Lobbying efforts may continue, especially as testmakers vie for a diminishing market share.

TYLER: The thing that may be more difficult for the standardized tests and the admissions departments generally is what's called the demographic cliff, where there just may not be enough students for all of the colleges in our country to survive.

Despite a dwindling number of college students, the CLT is growing. Between 2016 and 2023, roughly 21,000 high school juniors and seniors took the alternate test. Last year alone, students took ten times that many. The number of students considering the CLT may increase, thanks to bills in Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Iowa—adding the CLT at publicly funded universities.

For now, the Classic Learning Test remains most popular among members of its original target audience: private and homeschooled students like Sarah Catherine Grace.

GRACE: It didn't feel like you're reading about Jane and Jack throwing around the ball. It was very much like thinking through it critically. And that was another thing, was they really wanted to tackle how you thought through things ... and you're not just memorizing a bunch of random facts for a test to get a good grade.

For WORLD, I’m Anna Johansen Brown.

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