Public universities in Texas can immediately start using Classic Learning Test (CLT) scores for in-state applicants who fall outside the state’s automatic admissions window, Texas’ higher education commissioner, Wynn Rosser, wrote to college chancellors and presidents on Thursday, July 23.
The CLT exam is gaining traction in Republican-led states, with universities in Florida and Arkansas already having adopted the exam for their admissions. Created in 2015, it promotes itself as an alternative to the SAT and ACT that draws its reading-comprehension passages exclusively from “classic” works and authors “that have shaped history and culture.”
Its author bank, which makes up two-thirds of reading and writing passages on the exam, includes authors such as C.S. Lewis, Martin Luther, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Mahatma Gandhi. It also includes poems such as “Beowulf,” which the exam says “fuses two worlds, pagan and Christian, with an effect seldom rivalled in any other literature.”
Critics argue the exam relies too heavily on Western cultures, which has been a similar argument against new social studies teaching standards in K-12 Texas public schools that were passed by the State Board of Education in June.
