Jeremy Tate, president and founder of Maryland-based Classic Learning Initiatives, today announced the public launch of a new, highly praised college entrance exam, the CLT exam. Considered by many educators to be a much-needed, superior option to the evolving ACT and SAT exams in demonstrating a college applicant’s reading, writing and math abilities, registration for the CLT exam is now open, as of April 1, 2016.
Colleges and universities currently accepting—and in fact preferring—prospective students to take the CLT exam include St. John’s College (both Annapolis and Santa Fe campuses), Thomas Aquinas College, Northeast Catholic College, Aquinas College, Christendom College, Thomas More College, Wyoming Catholic College, New Saint Andrews College and John Paul the Great Catholic University. More schools are very interested with administration approval pending.
Not only is the CLT superior to the ACT and the SAT in its content, methodology and assessment of reading, writing and mathematics—pulling test excerpts from such classic artists and thinkers as C.S. Lewis, Flannery O’Connor, Plato, Martin Luther King, Jr., G.K. Chesterton, Socrates and more—but it is also superior in its test-taking method and delivery.
The CLT is taken online, not on paper, in the presence of a proctor. Students taking the CLT exam will receive their scores in minutes, not weeks.
Offered five times a year, it may be taken multiple times. And, while the ACT and SAT exams require 2:45 and 3:45 hours respectively, the CLT exam requires only 2 hours.
“Existing standardized tests focus too narrowly on stripped, sterilized texts without allowing students to consider broader implications of decisions, ideas and discoveries, which are found in the rich and abundant history of sources ranging from St. Augustine to Kant,” explains Tate.
“The CLT reintroduces this history,” Tate continues, “by focusing on sources and materials that draw upon a strong tradition and challenges students to analyze and comprehend texts that are not just concerned with one small, narrow topic, but texts that engage with the world at large.”
In the first of a proposed three-part independent analysis of the CLT, dated March 22, 2016, Brian D. Ray, Ph.D., founder and president of the National Home Education Research Institute and a rigorous education researcher, reports as follows.
“This evaluation has revealed preliminary solid evidence that the CLT is a valid and reliable measure of high school mastery of key academic subject areas and of college readiness and course placement…. firm evidence of convergent validity… evidence of content-related validity and plenty of evidence of face validity.”
“The measure of reliability, internal consistency, is statistically significant and strong and sound compared to those associated with most standardized tests used in the United States (e.g., SAT, ACT, standardized academic achievement tests for grades K to 12).”
“In conclusion,” writes Dr. Ray, “this evaluation has found solid and promising evidence of both validity and reliability regarding the CLT.”
Mark Bauerlein, Ph.D., noted Emory University professor and author, agrees with the findings, saying, “The CLT is a fantastic preparation… Students who study for CLT will enter college with the right formation, and their teachers will notice it immediately.”
Sandra Stosky, Ph.D., professor emerita at the University of Arkansas, concurs.
“The CLT is a fairer test of college readiness than tests with passages mainly on science or contemporary political questions,” says Dr. Stocky. “I would anticipate the results of this kind of test to better predict success in authentic college coursework than current college admissions tests.”
For more information, or to register to take the CLT college entrance test, go to CLTexam.com.