Dive Snapshot:
- Public colleges in Texas may consider Classic Learning Test scores when making admissions decisions for first-time students who don’t qualify for automatic admission based on their class standing, as well as for international and returning students, a state official told campus leaders last week.
- Texas Commissioner of Higher Education Wynn Rosser told the state’s higher education leaders in a July 23 memo that a recent study showed that the CLT, SAT and ACT are all of “sufficient rigor and reliability to be used as criterion for college admissions.”
- The study, conducted by Texas A&M University’s Public Policy Research Institute, found sufficient evidence for all three exams to “remain under consideration” for public college admissions but not enough to treat them “as equally ready, equally comparable, or equally defensible for statewide admissions use.”
The impact:
The CLT bills itself as an alternative to the SAT and ACT that focuses on longer reading passages from authors it says have made a mark on history and culture. Its author bank, from which two-thirds of its testing passages are drawn, ranges from ancient Greek philosophers like Plato to 20th-century writers such as C.S. Lewis.
The test has been gaining traction with Christian colleges, red states and conservative politicians. Its influence stands to further grow with Rosser’s announcement.
Although Rosser gave Texas colleges the green light to consider the CLT for some applicants, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board has not formally changed its admissions policies.
Under those rules, Texas residents qualify for automatic admission to public colleges in the state if they graduate in the top 10% of their class and either meet certain curricular requirements or obtain certain minimum scores on either the SAT or ACT. The University of Texas at Austin, the system’s flagship, is the exception, as it only admits students in the top 5% of their class.
The state’s higher education board plans to amend its admissions policies to align them with the standardized testing study’s findings, Rosser said. The board plans to consider new proposals by January, with any changes taking effect for students seeking admissions for the fall 2028 term.
The background:
Lawmakers tasked the higher education board with reviewing standardized testing options and state requirements for admissions last year. While the Texas A&M study found the CLT “organized and promising,” it also said the exam was moderately risky because it was “less mature than SAT and ACT.”
The reviewers gave the CLT just 1.4 out of 4 potential points for its ability to predict college success, mainly due to the relatively limited Texas-specific evidence the testing organization provided. CLT officials submitted a study involving 259 students in Texas that found a positive link between their CLT composite scores and first-year GPA.
Reviewers gave the ACT 3.8 points and the SAT 4 points for their predictive validity.
What we’re watching:
It remains to be seen how the Texas higher education board will revise its formal policy. But more states and university systems have been embracing the CLT.
In 2023, the governing board of Florida’s public university system voted to approve the CLT for undergraduate admissions across its 12 institutions. And under an Indiana law enacted this year, public colleges in the state will now have to consider the CLT as an acceptable alternative to the SAT or ACT.
