Florida’s public universities will now permit the Classic Learning Test in admissions, offering a conservative-backed alternative to the SAT and ACT. Florida is now the first state university system in the country to allow for the Classic Learning Test (CLT), which has gained recent popularity among the state’s Christian and charter schools.
The classical education model — not to be confused with “classics” or “classical humanities” — focuses on a return to “core values” and the “centrality of the Western tradition.” The Florida state university system’s board of governors on Friday approved the test for use in undergraduate admissions.
I don’t see what the issue is. The CLT looks like it’s basically the SAT, but it’s newer and uses snippets from classical literature instead of new passages. Other than that, it measures largely the same thing.
I guess there’s a stigma against it because it’s used largely by private religious schools? But a lot of large private universities have ties to religion, and it’s probably way easier for a private school to try out something new than for a public school, so that association doesn’t necessarily mean the test has anything religious in it.
I’m all for having another big test kids can choose to take. The school I went to accepted both the ACT and the SAT, and students were allowed to submit one or both (I took both and submitted my ACT, though I got a similar score on each). I imagine that schools that try this new test will likely do the same, keep accepting the SAT, but also accept the CLT.
If anyone is actually familiar with the test itself, could you fill me in on what makes this a bad test? You know, other than association with Christian private universities.