published on August 17, 2024 in Informative Details

Floridas CLT is an SAT alternative. Experts say the test isnt ready.

As Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis attacks “woke” ideology and trumpets “classical education,” allies of the Republican presidential candidate have elevated a little-known college admission exam that frequently draws on ancient Greek and Roman texts and other passages from the Western canon. For the first time, applicants to the University of Florida and numerous other public universities in the Sunshine State can send a score from the Classic Learning Test instead of the ACT or SAT.

This level of acceptance in a megastate marks a breakthrough for the eight-year-old test. It is also the latest in a series of DeSantis-backed challenges to the College Board, which oversees the SAT and the Advanced Placement high school program. His administration rejected plans for an AP African American studies class.

But some testing experts question whether the CLT has shown it is ready for such a major assignment. They say its claim of validity as an admissions exam is not as solid as it should be. And they question whether its scores can be compared yet to those from other tests.

“They don’t currently have sufficient evidence to support high-stakes college admissions decisions,” said Andrew Ho, an education professor at Harvard University and vice president of the National Council on Measurement in Education. “They have a lot of research they need to do and publish transparently.”

Classic Learning Initiatives, a company based in Annapolis, Md., that oversees the CLT, says that the test’s scores are accepted at more than 200 colleges and universities, about one-tenth of the four-year institutions in the country. Many are small Christian schools. Two are the public University of New Mexico and Christopher Newport University in Virginia.

Noah J. Tyler, chief financial officer of Classic Learning Initiatives, said the company plans to publish a detailed report within a few weeks — on test development, scaling, scoring, reliability and validity — that updates a technical report published five years earlier.

He pushed back on doubts that the CLT is up to the task in Florida and beyond.

“We are ready and getting ready,” Tyler said. “We have scaled, we are scaling and we will scale,” Tyler said. “We’ve really moved the needle forward in a lot of technical aspects.”

Last spring, Florida lawmakers approved a measure enabling the CLT to be used to help qualify for state scholarships.

Then, as the state university system Board of Governors debated adopting it as an acceptable admissions test last month, a faculty member on the board raised concerns. Amanda J. Phalin, an instructional associate professor of business at the University of Florida, said she had consulted with faculty experts who questioned the CLT’s documentation. “We do not have the empirical evidence to show that this assessment is of the same quality as the ACT and the SAT,” Phalin said.

Nevertheless, the board overwhelmingly approved use of the CLT on Sept. 8. “The system is pleased to add the CLT to reach a wider variety of students from different educational backgrounds,” the university system said in a statement. “Not intimidated by controversy or critics, our focus is on the success of our students, and the State of Florida.”

The state university system declined to make its chancellor, Raymond Rodrigues, available for an interview or to answer emailed questions from The Washington Post about the CLT, including those about how many Florida students in the high school class of 2023 had taken the CLT.

Launched in 2015, the test takes about two hours and covers three sections: quantitative reasoning (essentially math); verbal reasoning; and grammar and writing. The ACT and SAT also cover reading, grammar and math.

The CLT’s most distinctive feature is an author list with more than 150 names, mostly from the Western intellectual tradition. These range from the Greek philosopher Aristotle and medieval Christian thinker St. Thomas Aquinas to modern writers such as “The Lord of the Rings” author J.R.R. Tolkien and the African American historian and civil rights pioneer W.E.B. Du Bois. Two-thirds of the reading and writing passages in the test draw on works from these figures.

The CLT says its goal is to “reconnect knowledge and virtue by providing meaningful assessments and connections to seekers of truth, goodness, and beauty.”

The marketing of the test as “classic” appeals to politicians such as DeSantis, who argue that liberal ideology in recent decades has marred school curriculums. DeSantis used that line of attack this year after Florida officials said an initial version of the African American studies course “lacks educational value.” State officials also questioned the content of an AP psychology course because of its discussion of sexual orientation and gender issues.

One DeSantis ally, conservative activist Christopher Rufo, is a trustee of New College of Florida who is pushing to shift that public school to a “classical liberal arts model” and abolish diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Rufo is also listed on the Board of Academic Advisors to the CLT.

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But the founder and chief executive of Classic Learning Initiatives, Jeremy W. Tate, told The Post in April that he wanted to position the exam as nonpartisan. “I don’t want to see the movement getting politically hijacked, in terms of CLT being a ‘red-state’ thing,” Tate said at the time.

Florida education bill boosts ‘classic’ alternative to SAT and ACT

Tyler said about 25,000 students have taken the CLT for college admissions. (More have taken versions available for lower grade levels.) Many of these students were home-schooled or in private schools. The company declined to say how many took the CLT in the most recent school year or in the most recent graduating class. It also declined to provide demographic data on its test-takers.

The College Board, by contrast, reports that 1.9 million students in the high school class of 2023 took the SAT, including 205,000 students from Florida. As for the ACT, new data show nearly 1.4 million took it in the class of 2023. Both large tests routinely publish extensive data about their users, including race, level of parental education and family income.

A key question about the CLT is whether admissions officers, students and parents understand and trust what its scores mean. The CLT’s website publishes charts comparing its scale (maximum 120) to those of the SAT (max 1600) and ACT (max 36). According to these charts, a score of 100 on the CLT corresponds to a 1390 on the SAT and a 31 on the ACT.

The charts drew on two sources. First, Classic Learning Initiatives generated a unilateral study comparing its scores to the SAT. Separately, the College Board and ACT had teamed on an earlier study, known as a concordance, comparing scores on their two tests.

But there was no direct study linking CLT and ACT scores. Rather, Classic Learning Initiatives inferred a relationship by using the SAT-ACT concordance.

The College Board, based in New York, and the ACT, based in Iowa, have raised concerns about the charts.

The College Board contended in July that the Classic Learning Initiatives comparison with SAT scores “does not meet industry standards.” The College Board also said it could not verify the SAT scores that were analyzed because it was not involved in the study. “We cannot validate the interpretation and use of concorded CLT-to-SAT scores for high-stakes decisions, like admissions and scholarship awards, based on the published study,” the College Board said.

The ACT says much the same about the inferred link to its own scores. “It is not possible for students, families, and educators to reliably compare scores on the tests,” ACT chief executive Janet Godwin said in a statement to The Post.

Ho said any comparison of CLT scores to the ACT is problematic, absent a formal study. He also said evidence linking CLT and SAT scores is incomplete.

Tyler defended the company’s analysis of CLT and SAT scores as rigorous. He acknowledged that there was no formal study to link CLT to ACT scores, but he said it was legitimate for the company to provide the CLT-to-ACT chart “for the convenience” of those who are interested.

Over the summer, the College Board, ACT and Classic Learning Initiatives held meetings about the possibility of a new joint study that might produce a consensus on comparing scores. So far those talks have not borne fruit.

“We are working on building the trust necessary for collaboration on a new concordance table,” Tyler said.

Priscilla Rodriguez, senior vice president for college readiness assessments at the College Board, said the organization in these meetings has spelled out steps needed for a valid concordance. “CLT to this point has not moved that conversation forward,” Rodriguez said.

Gregory Cizek, a professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and past president of the National Council on Measurement in Education, said the College Board and ACT are seeking to protect their market share from the potential incursions of a new rival. As a new test, Cizek said, the CLT faces inherent limits in how much it can demonstrate. It must develop a track record, he said.

“They’ve done what a newcomer can do to get their foot in the door,” Cizek said. “Have they done enough? What I think I would like to see is a research plan.”

Ho said further studies of the validity of the CLT are crucial. One way to do that would be to analyze the first-year college grades of students who took the CLT under high-stakes conditions.

“The task they have in front of them is substantial and will take time,” Ho said. The CLT, he said, is “way behind where I would have expected a test to be for this level of faith that Florida has placed in the test.”

Florida’s state system, with 12 schools, enrolls about 430,000 students. While most public universities elsewhere no longer require test scores for freshman admission, Florida’s do. It is likely that SAT and ACT will continue to dominate the state market for now. But the CLT is now an option.

“Because we reject the status quo,” the state system said in a news release, the Sept. 8 “decision means we are better serving students by giving them an opportunity to showcase their academic potential and paving the path to higher education. As this assessment focuses on critical thinking skills, Florida will lead the way in filling our state and nation with bright and competitive students.”

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