Indiana public colleges must soon accept this alternative to the SAT and ACT

Dive Brief:

Under a new law, Indiana public colleges will soon have to accept the Classic Learning Test — a standardized test favored by the Trump administration and conservative lawmakers — as an acceptable substitute for the SAT or ACT.
Republican Gov. Mike Braun signed SB 88 on Thursday, after both chambers of the Indiana General Assembly passed the bill largely along party lines. The change will take effect in July, making Indiana at least the fifth state where lawmakers or public college systems have enacted policies geared toward expanding use of the CLT. 
The new CLT requirement is unlikely to create immediate changes at most of the state’s public colleges, as the majority offer test-optional admissions. The law showcases the continued growth of the CLT, which is popular among Christian colleges and K-12 schools.

Dive Insight:

Like the SAT and ACT, the CLT tests students on their English and mathematics skills. 

But leaders at Classic Learning Initiatives, the education company that administers the CLT, have advocated for Christian education — and promoted the test’s ties to it.

“Up until the twentieth century, Christianity was the academic establishment, we built all the schools and universities that shaped Western intellectual life,” Jeremy Tate, the company’s CEO and founder, said on social media last month. “In the last century, however, secular ideologies displaced that inheritance. The task before us now is to build new institutions and schools that are both orthodox and academically excellent.”

A since-deleted 2023 tweet from a CLT academic adviser described the test as being designed around “the perennial truths of the great classical and Christian tradition.”

Each of the 10 colleges in Indiana that already accept the CLT is private and religiously affiliated.

In 2023, the State University System of Florida became the first public college network to approve the use of the CLT for granting admissions to its institutions and awarding state financial aid.

Since then, conservative state lawmakers have increasingly discussed and passed legislation focused on the CLT. The American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative think tank, has published model legislation for state lawmakers to authorize the CLT as an alternative to the SAT and ACT. 

At the federal level, Indiana Sen. Jim Banks, a Republican, introduced a bill in May that would have required military colleges to accept the CLT, as well as mandate that all federally-run K-12 schools administer the test to each 11th grade class. 

Although the bill didn’t advance, the U.S. Department of Defense under Secretary Pete Hegseth adopted the CLT at at least three military colleges.

The original version of Indiana’s bill included provisions that would have mandated K-12 schools to teach the Ten Commandments through a civics education course and limited instructors’ ability to teach about national identity, heritage, or culture. Lawmakers stripped both of those provisions out before they passed the legislation.