A recent article in The Washington Post described the growing use of the Classic Learning Test (CLT), calling it “an upstart exam.” The phrase in the subhead, “mainly featuring Western texts,” should all but sink it in the eyes of the Post’s left-leaning readers.
Indeed, a search through the Post’s archives revealed only three articles mentioning the CLT during the entire decade of the test’s existence. However, for those of us who live in a world where Western Civilization—especially Western Christian Civilization—is the apex of intellectual life on earth, the test’s growing popularity is intriguing.
Tests Determine Curriculum
As a history teacher who spent thirty-four years (1984-2018) in the trenches, I experienced firsthand the growing impact of standardized testing in the classroom. I have heard it said that “the people who write the test determine the curriculum,” and I thoroughly believe it. Jeremy Tate, founder of Classic Learning Initiatives, which publishes the exam, agrees, saying, “We view this as a lever that shapes education.”
I first noticed the CLT almost three years ago and wrote about it in October 2023. At that point, I paid special attention to one of its distinguishing qualities, the list of great thinkers that it spotlights.
From a Catholic perspective, the most refreshing part of the CLT list is the number of those whose names would never appear on a similar list from the SAT [Scholastic Aptitude Test] or ACT [American College Testing]. The “Ancients” list includes Saints Athanasius and Jerome. Saints Gregory the Great and Catherine of Siena are among the “Medievals.” The “Early Moderns” include Saints Thomas More and Saint Teresa of Ávila. The “Late Moderns” list is a bit lighter on great Catholic thinkers.
Some might argue that the list is polluted by including the likes of Luther, Calvin, Rousseau, Marx and Freud. However, that exposure can benefit a well-educated Catholic if taught to expose the errors each of those men represented. No one can contend against arguments that they do not understand.
Restoring Important Ideas
Conversely, the SAT and ACT diminished the importance of great thinkers, favoring the currently popular approach known as “multiculturalism,” which teaches that all the world’s cultures are equally important.
Fortunately, the CLT is gaining greater acceptance. In 2016, only 291 students took the newly introduced exam. By 2025, that number was up to almost 183,000. That growth rate is impressive, but it’s still miles behind the over two million who took the SAT and the 1.4 million who took the ACT. The biggest single boost for the CLT was Florida’s decision that all of its state-supported universities must accept it. In September 2025, Education Week noted that, “This month, the leftist journal, Politico, reported that the nation’s service academies will accept the test for the 2027 admissions cycle. Lawmakers in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and Wyoming passed legislation this spring encouraging its use in college admissions and state-funded scholarships.”
As states adopt the CLT, they set in motion an important process, one with a significant impact on students nationwide. As more students take the CLT, textbook companies face increased pressure to allocate more space to the material it covers. Those companies dislike producing different textbooks for several states. Therefore, students in states where the CLT is not used still benefit from exposure to more traditional material. This fact puts a considerable brake on the multicultural trend that textbooks have slavishly followed over the last three decades.
Leftist Objections
Recently, Curtis Dozier, professor of Greek and Roman studies at Vassar College, lent unwilling credence to this point. The title of Mr. Dozier’s most recent book, The White Pedestal: How White Nationalists Use Ancient Greece and Rome to Justify Hate, illustrates his biases. Like the leftist academic he is, he doesn’t criticize the test directly; he couches his disdain as distress about the future of education. “My biggest concern is that students won’t learn the truth about history.” Of course, the “truth” Mr. Dozier wants to perpetuate is the critical theory of history, which has done so much damage to real knowledge of the past.
Other academics voice their fears in another argument. “A review by the Iowa Board of Regents in 2024 couldn’t find a single peer-reviewed study on how well the CLT can predict success in college.” This form of verbal dodgeball is a favorite of the professoriate. They conveniently overlook the fact that the studies don’t exist because those who rule the universities are afraid of the possible answer, so they never authorize and fund the studies whose absence they decry.
Nor are the two competitors, SAT and ACT, eager for such studies to take place either. The Post quoted Pricilla Rodriguez, a senior vice president of the College Board. When Classic Learning Initiatives approached them for permission to compare data, the College Board excused itself by saying, “We are not sure these tests are similar enough” to justify comparison—and they have no intention of finding out until they have to.
Fortunately, the increasing popularity of the CLT bids fair to make such thinking obsolete. If the number of students who take the CLT increases as much in the next decade as it did in the last, the denizens of academia will need to take it more seriously. Such a change will be a good thing for every student in America’s schools.
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