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With college entrance exams like the ACT and SAT regarded as the American national standard, it can seem like parents have to choose between giving their children a deep classical education or teaching them the common core principles so that they can pass these standardized tests. The good news? There is a stronger option available: the Classic Learning Test. Jeremy Tate, the CEO of the CLT is with us today to show us where it came from, why it’s better, and how widely accepted it is becoming in today’s episode!

Episode Transcription

Note: This transcription may vary from the words used in the original episode for better readability.

Marlin Detweiler:

Hello again. I’m Marlin Detweiler. And this is Veritas Vox, the voice of classical Christian education. Today we have Jeremy Tate with us, who has produced something that I know you're going to be interested in – the CLT.

We will unpack what that is in just a moment. But first of all, I'd like you to meet Jeremy. Welcome.

Jeremy Tate:

Marlin. Great to see you. I think we first connected maybe six or seven years ago. Early, early CLT days. You've always been a great friend. Excited for the conversation.

Marlin Detweiler:

Tell us a little bit about your family and personal background.

Jeremy Tate:

Yeah. We are currently drowning in babies, which is a glorious thing. We've got six kiddos right now.

Marlin Detweiler:

Drowning in babies! I haven't heard it said like that, but that’s pretty good.

Jeremy Tate:

Yep, drowning in babies. One is 17. So I guess they're not all babies, but very blessed on the home front. I'm a dad. I'm a graduate of the Reformed Theological Seminary. Started CLT back in 2015 and been in the role of CEO here since about 2019.

Marlin Detweiler:

Very good. So what is the age range of your children?

Jeremy Tate:

So we've got 17, 12, 10, 3, and 1.

Marlin Detweiler:

Wow.

Jeremy Tate:

So we started saying we came out of retirement because, you know, four years ago –

Marlin Detweiler:

Gap in the action anyway.

Jeremy Tate:

That's right. Our youngest was seven years old. You know, we had it easy. But kids are so good, they're worth all the nights, you know, cleaning up throw up, and all the pain is so worth every minute of it.

Marlin Detweiler:

That's great. Well, let's move into our topic at hand. What is the CLT?

Jeremy Tate:

Yeah. So the Classic Learning Test. Fundamentally, it's a way to challenge the College Board. So we are really focused on the College Board. We launched as an alternative to the College Board, really by seeing the influence. So if you haven't heard of the College Board, or maybe you have. But Marlin, I would describe the College Board as the most powerful entity really in American education by owning and controlling the AP, the AP curriculum, the AP test, the PSAT, the SAT., the ACCUPLACER.

They are a billion-dollar empire. And they've always been on the left, I would say. But they are now aggressively secular. And I think in many ways, far more powerful in undermining the mission of Christian schools. And this is what I'm talking about. When I launched CLT in 2015, one of the catalysts was an experience I had.

I was working at Mount DeSales Academy. It's a faithfully Catholic, all girls school in Haynesville, Maryland. And these Dominican sisters there, they wanted to be very focused on scripture, philosophy, classical literature, and they introduced two new classes in 2015. One was an intro to Christian Apologetics. Another was an intro to philosophy. And very, very few students signed up for either class.

And I was part of talking to students saying, Why? Why don't you want to take apologetics? Why don't you want to take the philosophy? And the number one answer from the top students was that it's not worth any AP points. I don't get any AP credits for this. And I thought, wow, here we've got this aggressively secular testing company in New York that is having this kind of an impact on what happens to our Christian school in Catonsville, Maryland.

And just talking to other folks, I was also running an SAT prep company, working with a number of homeschoolers. And at the same time, Marlin, the S.A.T. and the A.C.T. both aligned with the Common Core Standards. And a lot of folks in the homeschool world were not happy about that move. And so there was a demand for a new option.

And in some ways, the CLT happened, I was actually researching who was making the alternative because I thought, of course, someone's making the alternative because there's such a demand for it. Everybody hates the College Board and A.C.T. They hate that they've aligned with Common Core. And in the course of researching who is making the alternative, I discovered nobody's making the alternative. There's an opportunity here.

Marlin Detweiler:

Interesting. So the S.A.T. is owned by the College Board. That's a nonprofit business, correct?

Jeremy Tate:

They would say so. The CEO raked in almost $2 million this past year, but they are technically. Their tax status is 501c3

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah, but being paid well is a different issue for nonprofits. I know that can be the case. So who owns the A.C.T.?

Jeremy Tate:

A.C.T. is its own company, and it's called A.C.T. as well.

Marlin Detweiler:

Okay. And they are the ones that have been the standard in many instances for a measurement across students to get into colleges.

Jeremy Tate:

Sure. You know, and part of the history of American education and this is why I think that the SAT and ACT are so interesting to anyone who cares about American education. You know, essentially, if you look at the Harvard entrance exam, Marlin, from the 1850s and 1860s,

Marlin Detweiler:

Yep, I have actually used it in talks!

Jeremy Tate:

They're translating Greek. They're translating Latin. And then fast forward, the College Board is then founded in 1900. And the initial idea was to unify the admissions process for kids wanting to go to elite Ivy League schools. But then what happens is you have World War I and a new kind of testing is developed in World War I.

I was it was the Army Alpha test. And the idea behind the Army Alpha test was to very quickly figure out who was going to basically be in intelligence and who was going to be on the front lines. You know, talk about high stakes testing. And so they wanted to identify high cognitive ability and keep those people back in intelligence and everybody else, you go to the front lines, you're going to go running into an army of bullets in Europe. And they used that same concept to develop the SAT in the 1920s. It rolls out in 1926, and it's not used that heavily, actually, until the end of World War II and the end of World War II with the GI Bill, you have a ton of mostly young men wanting to go to college and limited seats available. So colleges quickly become highly competitive. And the S.A.T. is then used as kind of the main sorting mechanism to see who's going to get in.

Marlin Detweiler:

Yep. Very good. So why is the CLT a better alternative than the SAT and ACT?

Jeremy Tate:

We've been saying two things. One is that the tests end up driving the curriculum, and the test is both a reflection of mainstream education as we see in the case of the Harvard entrance exam in the 1850s and sixties. It's a reflection of mainstream ed and it's a driver of mainstream ed at the same time.

And so the SATs have come to be highly ideological. They have aligned themselves with the Common Core State Standards, which, if you don't know anything about the Common Core, the new weird math, they're doing–

Marlin Detweiler:

I know way too much.

Jeremy Tate:

Fantastic. So what we think for a student, you know, who's going through a great homeschool, you know, and I know you've been leading the way here for decades, Marlin. We think the CLT is a better tool to demonstrate academic ability than the SAT. It doesn’t mean that a homeschool kid is not going to do great on the SATs.

They're actually going to do just fine. They're going to do probably very well. What we do see is that public schools still tend to really struggle with the CLT or aspects of the CLT. They just haven't read much philosophy. They haven't read much classical literature.

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah, I understand that. And I think that a significant thing we have in our curriculum, we have a heavy emphasis on reading and studying classical literature, and it really does help parse our students among themselves. But you're right, the students who graduate from Veritas Scholars Academy, our online school, do remarkably on the A.C.T. and the S.A.T. And so that remains some value because it does help them by a separate standard. But it doesn't help them in terms of seeing how they're doing compared to each other. And that's a really valuable thing.

Jeremy Tate:

Yeah. And you know, you've seen this from the time that you started Veritas. What was that, 1996?

Marlin Detweiler:

Yep, 1996. ‘92 was our first involvement where we started the Geneva School in Orlando. But Veritas was not incorporated until ‘96.

Jeremy Tate:

Okay, ‘96. So even yeah, back then and maybe all the way until, you know, ‘08 in the housing crisis, colleges didn't know what to think about homeschoolers. And I would say almost unquestionably now colleges know these kids are normal. There's actually a high premium on just normal right now.

Marlin Detweiler:

Ha, it’s about time!

Jeremy Tate:

Yeah. A kid is going to come and not be a basket case – colleges are hungry for those students. Like just be normal. That's so nice. And yeah and these are leaders on campus. They've gone from being kind of weird to like the most desirable students that colleges are looking for. Kids coming out of places like Veritas.

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah. How could you alleviate or how can we help alleviate any fear that a student might have, that they might have a bad result when they see the S.A.T. and they know what to expect? And it's been going on for decades. It's one thing, but because you're testing better, you're testing more precisely, you're probably testing more significantly. I know you are. Students might have a fear of that. How do you alleviate that fear?

Jeremy Tate:

Great question. How do you alleviate the fear? Well, it is true, Marlin. The CLT, not just objectively, it is the hardest of the three. It's not wildly harder, but it is clearly the hardest of the three options. And when you think about it, the SAT and ACT have had basically a market incentive to make their tests a little bit easier than any other one.

It's how you're going to be the way to get more scholarships and admissions. And so there's been this race to the bottom. The CLT came in and kind of hit the reset button. And so the plus side of that is that colleges, regardless of the score, I've been shocked to see this– a number of colleges will say they have tied some scholarship money to those submitting any CLT score, regardless of what it is, because they know what kind of student that they're going to get.

Marlin Detweiler:

The very fact that the student takes that test is an indication that they're a student of a different ilk.

Jeremy Tate:

Exactly. That's perfectly said. Exactly. And then the other thing is that we have in CLT Analytics, we have what are called user norms. And you can also see the national norms. And sometimes when a student or parent will see user norms, meaning all the other students that are taking the CLT, it can be discouraging because we do have kids from great classical homeschools and classical Christian schools. So the user base of CLT, these are kids who on the S.A.T. average about a 1250, very, very high. But when you compare that to the national norms, then students even who don't do great on the CLT are still going to be well above the national average.

Marlin Detweiler:

In our education, whether it's parents buying curriculum from us or schools buying curriculum from us, or our online school, we never encourage teaching to the test and a lot of the public school environments, even private schools, have done a lot of that within the academic time, they are preparing students to get a good number on their SAT., ACT. or maybe even CLT.

I'm not aware of any schools doing that directly, but they could. It's conceivable. But we've taken a very different tact. We say we're trying to teach for the sake of learning and we're keeping our content and what we think is most important to know. But we also recognize that test prep is something worth investing in. And so we have invested in recommended students do test prep. Separate courses outside of academic time to prepare for these standardized tests like ACT, SAT, and CLT.

So how has the test prep world addressed the CLT test? Are there places out there that are addressing and helping students prepare for it?

Jeremy Tate:

You know, more and more. It's funny that you ask that question. Just a couple weeks ago I thought, I wonder what happens if you put CLT prep in Amazon? What comes up is somebody was selling a CLT prep guide. We ordered it. It was no good. We're now putting our prep guide up on Amazon as well. But you know, yes, it's happening now.

More and more test prep companies are offering CLT prep as well. I often describe test prep as actually something that really has kept the SAT and ACT entrenched. In some ways think about for a minute the whole test prep industry is like the marketing arm of the SAT. and ACT, right? And so they're – Oh, what do I got to study for?

Oh, yeah, I got to register for the SAT, too. Right. So SAT and ACT are banking on it, right? They love that that's actually happening. But I think test prep can be dangerous soul-sucking, right? It can be a bad experience. So what we want to do for Veritas students, for other homeschool students, is reinforce, by putting them in front of the same kinds of attacks.

And I think, Marlin, we're talking about a kind of fluency here. You know, if you have read Pilgrim's Progress, if you're familiar, you can pick up and read, you know, C.S. Lewis. You're going to have the kind of fluency that is going to what you're going to do just fine on the CLT.

Marlin Detweiler:

It's really funny. It's an acquired ability to read classical literature, but once you've read a book or two, you've opened up 2,000, maybe 4,000, and have to think about the number in my head, not 4,000, but through 3,000 years worth. You've got to be able to take that and contextualize that. That's a very important skill and what it does to produce in students the ability to converse and lead is incredible. And testing in that category is invaluable.

Jeremy Tate:

Yeah, Yeah. I think the analogy I like to use with test prep Marlin is, I love running, I love cross-country running. I love to watch it. But, you know, nobody PR’s, nobody sets a personal record their first time on a new course. You know, you've got to be familiar with the hills and where the stream is, where the giant log is. It’s similar with test prep.

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah. Yep. Well, I was always yeah, my, my strengths academically were in math and thinking pretty logically came fairly naturally. So I tested well. But some students don't test well because they don't think in terms of systematic elimination of answers and proclivities and likelihoods and that sort of thing. In the same way. Are those students handled any do those students have any different experience or results than what they might in the ACT/SAT?

Jeremy Tate:

You know, sometimes we do hear folks say, “Oh, I'm so glad you made an alternative. I did terribly on the SAT and ACT, you know, back in the day.” And I think “I don't know that you would necessarily do better.” We actually retained a number of the things that are no longer part of the new SAT. So you remember when you took the SAT? When I took it, there were analogies, right? There are a ton of analogies. There's none now. Not one on the new SAT.

Marlin Detweiler:

That's too hard. That's true. The thinking is too hard for them.

Jeremy Tate:

Yeah, well, the analogies are considered aptitude testing, and aptitude testing is now a no-no. So the scholastic Aptitude testing, according to the CEO of the test, he says, “We've eliminated every aspect of aptitude testing.” So what is it, then? Well, the Common Core Achievement test is not what the test actually is. We at the CLT, we have retained some of the hallmarks of aptitude testing. So there are analogy questions, there are logic questions on the math side.

Marlin Detweiler:

How many colleges are you–? Well, I realize this is a moving target, so let me ask the question differently so that this interview remains a bit more evergreen. But let me ask a question about– it's notable as we look at the schools that have accepted it, some really good schools are schools that get a lot of our kids.

But the big schools, the big state schools, the Ohio state, Penn state, Michigan, Florida, I could go on thinking in terms of the sports that I follow and other schools. What does it take to get them to accept the CLT or to recognize that maybe is the right term?

Jeremy Tate:

Yeah, sure. And Marlin, I don't know when this is going to drop this podcast, but we're very excited about the state of Florida. And so you may have seen the CLT. We were in recent legislation which ties CLT scores to Bright Futures Scholarship. Bright Futures is the most well-funded, most well-known scholarship in the country. The whole idea is to keep Florida kids in Florida with bright futures.

And with this, they've taken Florida State to top 20 nationally. The University of Florida now ranks next to UVA and the University of Michigan. It's ranked number five. Not that I care a whole lot about U.S. News and World Report thinks anyway, but these are schools that are on an incredible trajectory and there's a lot of love for CLT.

It hasn't happened yet, but we're in conversation with a lot of folks in Florida. And we are, I would just say, very optimistic that within the next four, six, eight weeks that we will be fully adopted at Florida State, the University of Florida and all the other Florida public schools as well. But we believe that's going to happen because of legislation that came about.

And we see that happening in three or four other states as well. At the end of the day, I mean, we tried making CLT palatable to big universities and I remember Marlin, you'll love this story, but I sat down with a public university in 2017 or 2018 and they had looked at CLT and they gave me the meeting because I had a connection there and they said, “We can't use this as an admissions test. We can't accept this.” I said, “Why not? Why can't you?” He says, “You've got C.S. Lewis, you've got John Paul the second in here.” I said, “Tose are two of the greatest minds of the entire 20th century.” And they were literally just at the presumption that because those were Christian people, they're just going to be discriminated against, that they don't get a seat at the table.

That's where mainstream higher ed is at. And they think it's completely excusable. In fact, they thought it was unreasonable that I thought we wouldn't eliminate them, you know, And I said, “Look, I didn't even say you have to agree with C.S. Lewis or John Paul the second. But to be a well-read person… and this is a guy that had a greater influence in ending communism than maybe anyone else on the planet, shouldn't students read his thoughts?” You know, I mean, this is the kind of bias that is so normal and assumed in mainstream higher ed.

Marlin Detweiler:

We've taken a very different tack. And I suspect you have with testing as well. But we've got students reading Darwin, we've got reading Nietzsche, we've got them reading Hitler. We want them to understand the people that we disagree with as Christians. We want them to be able to articulate when they go into the world as adults. If they don't understand what they're fighting against, how can they possibly expect to thrive and maybe even survive?

We've taken a different tactic. It's really a sad state of affairs that we find ourselves choosing ignorance regardless of what the content might be in terms of trying to understand in our educational process.

Jeremy Tate:

Yeah, and we do, Marlin, just for clarity, we do have those same authors on our author bank and there's only about 190 on there. But the people go down there like Karl Marx, Nietzsche, like what is going on there? You know, we said we're not endorsing them necessarily, but you need to be able to read them. This is a hallmark of an educated person for centuries of being able to read and understand something you didn't agree with without having an emotional meltdown.

Marlin Detweiler:

So here's a question that gets you to think about your trajectory. When will you've arrived and not think of yourself or promote yourself as an alternative?

Jeremy Tate:

Yeah, I love the question and it's very, very timely. You know, we've never wanted to be a classical niche alternative to the College Board. Our goal has been to replace the College Board. That's been our goal. Our goal is to be number one. We believe we can do that with a better vision for education. And look, we've got the best folks from Grove City, from Hillsdale, from St. John's College in Annapolis.

We've got an incredible team here. But that is the goal. It that may take us 30 years to get there, but we're really, really hungry. And I think we went from like a joke to the College Board to a little bit more annoying and now we're pretty annoying.

Marlin Detweiler:

And if you love when somebody has got you in the rearview mirror. And at some point you plan to pass them.

Jeremy Tate:

Yeah, that's the plan. That's the hope. Yeah. So we do want to be the gold standard for what it means. We want to be the measuring stick.

Marlin Detweiler:

Very good. So students can take the test online from home. Tell us how that works. Tell us how parents can understand that so that they can consider it. We have arrangements within our online school for the CLT to be taken, but I think it would be good to hear from you how that plays out.

Jeremy Tate:

Yeah, so it's remotely proctored. You don't have to go to a test site. It's incredible technology. And so the student will sit down to test. Maybe they're in their basement or a living room and they hit “start recording” and it will be doing two things. It's going to be making sure there is nobody next to them whispering answers or something.

But also we're doing a keystroke analysis which is automated as well. I think it's as secure or even more secure as a traditionally proctored test, where you've got one person pacing up and down the aisles and looking over your shoulder or whatnot. So but it's shorter and then we get results back to students within about a week.

Marlin Detweiler:

Oh, wow. That's incredible. So what you mentioned, the progress that you see becoming the gold standard and may take 30 years. What should we anticipate over the next year and over the next five years from you all?

Jeremy Tate:

Yeah, we anticipate other states following Florida's lead in following and so I would anticipate that to be states like Texas, Arkansas, South Carolina, we're in conversation with folks at the legislative level already in some of those states. So I think we're going to see that. I think we're going to see also a big, big jump in lower-grade testing.

And so third, fourth, fifth and sixth is where we anticipate the most rapid growth. And, you know, I love to share this with you. But, you know, NWEA Maps is a testing company used on the Catholic side. It's used by over 2000 Catholic schools. It's used by a lot of Christian schools, a lot of homeschoolers as well.

Well, NWEA maps got exposed in a big way just a few months ago. They had on their website, multiple pages of how you introduce young children to LGBTQ+ friendliness, how you teach them to become allies in the movement. So much so that they were recommending as a read-aloud for kindergartners “The Drag Queen’s Dress goes Swish-Swish-Swish”. Now they put this book “The Drag Queen’s Dress goes Swish-Swish-Swish” to the sound of the Wheels On The Bus and they sing it out loud with five-year-olds. They've gone just full-born ideological.

And so what we've done with lower grades is we have looked at, well, what did they do 100 years ago? What kind of stories did our grandparents have in books? So the kids are reading poetry. They're reading excerpts from fairy tales. They're reading excerpts from Grimm's Fairy Tales or from Aesop's Fables. There’s a big demand for it.

Marlin Detweiler:

That's awesome. Well, folks, we have had Jeremy take the founder and CEO of CLT – Classic Learning Test with us on Veritas Vox today. Jeremy, Thank you.

Jeremy Tate:

Marlin, you've been a great friend for a long time to the CLT. Appreciate the work you're doing. And yeah, excited to keep the conversation going!

Marlin Detweiler:

We're happy to continue to partner with you! Folks, thank you for joining us at Veritas Vox. The Voice of classical Christian education.