Texas becomes latest state to welcome alternative college entrance exam amid SAT, ACT scrutiny

Texas is expanding college entrance exam options to public universities statewide to include the Classic Learning Test – an SAT/ACT alternative based in classical Western intellectual tradition and which education experts say will raise the bar for academic rigor in higher education.

“The legacy admissions industry – the SAT, ACT, and AP exams and university administrators – are supposed to act as gatekeepers to college, but they have fallen asleep at the gates,” Veronica Bryant, Academic Affairs fellow at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, recently told Just the News in an interview.

“The CLT is providing a remedy for several major issues in higher education caused by this dereliction of duty: slipping academic standards, students’ inability to read, and neglect of foundational content knowledge.”

The announcement, sent several days ago by Texas Higher Education Commissioner Wynn Rosser via letter to campus leaders last week, follows an independent, Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board-mandated study on college entrance exam rigor.

The study found that CLT sufficiently ascertains college readiness, especially, education policy experts note, in light of significant reductions in rigor to the SAT/ACT “duopoly” in recent years.

“The SAT and ACT have become easier in the past decade,” Jenna Robinson, president of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, told Just the News.

“The ACT now makes the science section optional, and there are fewer questions than in the past. SAT scores have suffered from a significant compression at the top of the scale, making it harder to distinguish between excellent students and those who are merely good.” 

In 2024, the College Board, which administers the SAT, known more formally as the Scholastic Aptitude Test, made changes to the exam including shortening test lengths, offering fewer questions and increased time per question.

Text lengths in the reading portion of the SAT were also reduced from between 500-750 words to 25-150 words – signifying the exclusion of reading material such as passages from the U.S. founding documents. The ability to read and analyze these, the College Board argued, was “not an essential prerequisite for college and career readiness.”

An AI model in 2024 found that the SAT has been getting steadily easier by about four points each year for nearly two decades – amid concerns about declining student aptitude and shortened attention spans.

The CLT, which emphasizes Christian thinkers and classical literature such as Greek and Roman classics, was adopted last year by the U.S. service academies and will be part of their 2027 admission cycle. The move was considered a win for President Donald Trump and his allies, who have frequently railed against what they consider “woke” curriculum in higher education.

Florida, in 2023, became the first state to approve CLT as an entrance exam in its statewide public university system.

The other states that have approved or are in the process of approving, similar CLT-affirming legislation include Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Wyoming.