The College Board—the maker of the SAT—is amassing an army of lobbyists across the country for one purpose: not to improve student outcomes, increase college access, or even promote its own test.
No, the College Board is trying to defend its often state-sponsored testing monopoly from an upstart competitor a fraction of its size called the Classic Learning Test.
I know this well because I’m the president of CLT — and this is what’s happened. Back in 2015, I founded CLT as an alternative college entrance exam after I saw how the SAT (and what was then its only competitor, the ACT) were rooted in the controversial Common Core education standards. As an SAT and ACT tutor at the time, I wanted to give students the option to take something rigorous and rooted in the inspiring works of the Western Canon instead of being locked into a test replete with dry reading passages that hewed to the latest educational fads.
This vision struck a nerve. Over the past 10 years, CLT transformed from an idea into a nationwide college entrance exam administered over 180,000 times last year and accepted by 292 colleges and universities.
That’s a big achievement for us, and we hope to keep growing. But even in our best year, we have come nowhere close to the College Board’s $1 billion in annual revenue and roughly 2 million annual test takers.
Regardless, the makers of the SAT haven’t responded to this tiny bit of competition by improving their own test or meeting untapped demand. Instead, they are pushing state governments to squelch our test.
CLT’s big break came when Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) searched for a College Board alternative after seeing the woke bias in its tests. We were happy to extend our offerings to the state, giving students, teachers, and families the choice of which tests they want to use. The College Board responded by deploying 10 lobbyists to the Florida government to fight the governor’s decision.
Other states interested in expanding testing choice are also starting to feel the College Board’s pressure campaign. In Iowa, a study team assigned by the Board of Regents relied on College Board attacks to limit the use of CLT in the state without giving CLT the chance to provide any input. Meanwhile, in Oklahoma, state Rep. Toni Hasenbeck, a Republican, received what she called an “aggressive” letter from the College Board after sponsoring modest legislation that would allow students to qualify for state scholarships using a CLT score. “I didn’t appreciate it,” Hasenbeck said.
We’re even hearing reports that the College Board’s paid agents are starting to appear in every state interested in adopting the CLT.
Of course, the College Board doesn’t tell state leaders that it wants to restrict CLT to retain its market share. Instead, they denigrate the CLT as substandard. More specifically, the College Board attacks a concordance study that shows the CLT and SAT have highly correlated test scores, measuring similar skills by different means.
Yet this study has been reviewed and used by Florida’s Department of Education and Board of Regents as well as all of CLT’s partner universities for years. Moreover, CLT has offered to share our data with the other testing companies to complete yet another concordance study. Unfortunately, the College Board has not accepted our offer, evidently preferring to use this made-up controversy as a lobbying tool.
Another common College Board contention is that the CLT’s math section is not rigorous. This attack is plucked out of thin air. Not only does the CLT ask double the questions than the SAT in the most difficult math domains of geometry and trigonometry, but we also remain the only major test that forbids calculators.
The College Board’s campaign against CLT isn’t about truth but politics.
At CLT, we obviously have our difficulties with the SAT. I’ve written previously on how the SAT has been politicized, and I share concerns that the SAT’s declining standards, including reducing reading passages to the length of a tweet and the deteriorating rigor in its math segment, according to a University of Cincinnati study, are detrimental to students. But my goal in creating the CLT has never been to block the SAT from being offered or accepted. We’ve only ever wanted to provide an alternative.
DEMOCRATS’ FALSE FEAR MONGERING OVER EDUCATION
In the end, I believe the CLT will grow in popularity even in the face of this army of lobbyists for one simple reason: Our test is better.
But don’t just believe me. Ask yourself: If only one side is afraid of an open market, who do you think has a better product?
Jeremy Wayne Tate is the founder and CEO of the Classic Learning Test, a humanities-focused alternative to the SAT and ACT tests.