Georgia colleges consider controversial test as option to SAT

A contentious standardized college admissions test designed to usurp the SAT and ACT — and ultimately reshape the American education system — is gaining traction in conservative states across the country. Georgia could be next.

At a University System of Georgia Board of Regents meeting earlier this month, the body signaled a willingness to allow its public universities to accept the Classic Learning Test in lieu of the SAT or ACT.

Created in 2015, the CLT features reading passages “drawn from classic literature and historical texts that have had a lasting influence on Western culture,” according to its website. Critics, though, say it does not meet industry standards and question its ties to conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation.

The CLT has seen increased interest this year, with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in May calling it the “gold standard.” In September, Politico reported that it will be accepted by U.S. service academies starting with the 2027 admissions cycle.

“If we want this to be in place at the same time, then we need to act in the coming months,” said Regent Erin Hames during the Nov. 11 academic affairs committee meeting, which she chairs. “I would like to bring this back as an action item at our January board meeting.”

USG Chancellor Sonny Perdue said the University of North Georgia, which is one of six federally designated senior military colleges in the country, may be willing to follow the lead of the service academies. In a statement, UNG said it is “actively exploring this possibility.”

By permitting the test, Georgia would be following the recent footsteps of other Republican-controlled states, including Florida, Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma.

“We were at maybe 20,000 test takers a year a few years ago, and we’ll have 200,000 test takers this year,” Michael Torres, director of the CLT’s legislative strategy, said in an interview.

Founder Jeremy Tate has said, by 2040, he wants the CLT to be the top college entrance exam globally. It’s a lofty goal; the SAT had more than 2 million test takers from the high school class of 2025, according to the College Board, which administers the test.

Tate has repeatedly criticized the College Board, arguing that it excludes “the Catholic Christian literary tradition.”

The College Board says the CLT does not meet industry standards. It points to a study published by the Iowa Board of Regents last year, which found “no evidence to support the predictive efficacy of the CLT.” The study recommended that Iowa’s public universities exclude the CLT from their automatic admissions process, at least until “additional data on test takers and student outcomes becomes available.”

College entrance exams carry real consequences for students, said Priscilla Rodriguez, a senior vice president at College Board. “Which is why there are long-standing and widely accepted standards for the transparent, rigorous research that test makers need to produce to prove that they measure what they say they measure,” she said.

The CLT differs from the SAT in part because its math section doesn’t allow a calculator. And its reading passages, which are longer than those on the SAT, pull from “classic” works. “So students will have anything from Plato to Frederick Douglass, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Shakespeare,” said Torres.

Tate, said Rodriguez, “has stated very plainly and very publicly that his goal for the CLT is to change what is taught in America’s schools.”

In a podcast earlier this year, Tate said his hope is “to put the Catholic intellectual tradition front and center. And with that, you can even change K-12 education.” The College Board, he said, “drives curriculum in a way that minimizes the contribution of the Western intellectual tradition and the Catholic church.”

Harry Feder, executive director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, said the CLT is largely unremarkable. “It’s still a standardized test,” he said. “It is not asking you to analyze the theology of St. Augustine.”

But, with its ties to the Heritage Foundation and conservative activist Christopher Rufo, “it’s part of the same ‘project’ to remake American education,” Feder said. “It is supposed to return education to a Western Christian model, as opposed to a classically liberal, pluralistic model.”