Indiana House passes bill promoting conservative-linked ACT alternative
Indiana House passes bill promoting conservative-linked ACT alternative
Marissa Meador, Indianapolis StarWed, February 25, 2026 at 11:22 AM UTC
0
For decades, the ACT and the SAT have been the gatekeepers of college admissions, purporting to measure a student's aptitude in core subjects and producing a score that can mold a person's future.
Now, Indiana is close to offering a third option: the Classical Learning Test, a classics-based examination first embraced by religious colleges that is quickly gaining traction in Republican states.
Senate Bill 88 instructs high schools to prepare students to take the CLT in addition to the ACT and SAT and requires state educational institutions to accept the CLT as they would any other college admissions exam. It would also require schools to teach waiting until marriage to have kids as part of its good citizenship instruction, one of three steps in a 2000s anti-poverty theory called the "Success Sequence"
The House passed the bill Feb. 24 in a 65-29 vote, but the Senate still needs to vote to give it final approval.
While proponents of the CLT describe it as merely an alternative to current standardized testing, its emphasis on early Christian thought, as well as its fast-track in red states, has provoked skepticism from teachers' unions and some academics. The exam has also been boosted by Indiana's own U.S. Sen. Jim Banks, a Republican who authored a bill in the U.S. Senate to promote the CLT late last year.
Created by a former English teacher with a mission to "reconnect knowledge and virtue by providing meaningful assessments and connections to seekers of truth, goodness, and beauty," the CLT contains passages from religious thinkers like St. Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin and Pope John Paul II. But it also pulls from the Communist Manifesto author Karl Marx and Charles Darwin, who contributed to the theory of evolution.
Those are some of "the most important texts that have driven society and culture," founder Jeremy Tate told The Guardian in 2023, believing them to be key to reversing a trend of moral decline in public education. The for-profit company's expansive Board of Academic Advisors include right-wing figures like Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation and PragerU CEO Marissa Streit, though Tate claims that the test is not partisan.
Advertisement
At least nine Indiana colleges currently accept the CLT, including Anderson University, Grace College and Depauw, according to the bill's author, Sen. Gary Byrne, R-Byrneville. If Byrne's bill passes, Indiana would join a handful of states, including Florida, who are embracing the test.
But critics of the CLT said it could disadvantage students who are less acquainted with western classics.
"It has baked-in prejudices that would make students who come from less diverse backgrounds appear to have done better than students from more diverse backgrounds," Joel Hand, a lobbyist for the American Federation of Teachers for Indiana, said during Senate committee testimony in January.
The bill was lauded by several representatives of classical schools, who said their students would be best assessed by the CLT.
"A one-size-fits-all testing mandate, it really risks narrowing curriculum and unintentionally undermining the very excellence that it seeks to ensure," said Rachel Oren, head of the Classical Academy in Indianapolis.
Contact breaking politics reporter Marissa Meador at [email protected] or find her on X at @marissa_meador.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana House boosts conservative-linked college admissions test
Source: “AOL Breaking”
