[Tate] said the test is meant to be an alternative to the College Board-administered SAT exam, which he says has become “increasingly ideological” in part because it has “censored the entire Christian-Catholic intellectual tradition” and other “thinkers in the history of Western thought.”
…
“We’re thrilled they like what we’re doing,” Tate said. “We’re talking to people in the administration, again, really, almost every day right now.”
Specifically, Tate said he is seeking to make the test an option for the taxpayer-funded Bright Futures Scholarship program, which rewards Florida high school students based on academic achievement. Students can use the scholarship to help pay for a Florida-based college education. Currently, the scholarship is tied to the SAT and ACT test scores.
While DeSantis has not publicly singled out the Classic Learning Test as an alternative to the College Board’s SAT, he has said he wants to seek out “other vendors” who can do it “better” than the SAT. A top education official in his administration has indicated interest in the CLT test.
There are plenty of problems with the ACT, SAT, and standardized testing in general. The idea that they’re too “ideological” isn’t one of them. Republicans just
don’t like that the ACT and SAT are
aligned with Common Core standards. That makes it somewhat harder to game the system (with, say, test prep classes available to those who can afford them) but falls more in line with what many kids are learning in school. Telling schools to accept a little-known test as evidence of a student’s academic abilities is absurd, especially when that alternative was
literally created for ideological reasons.
This is all nothing more than an attempt to legitimize a conservative group’s exam that has currency mostly within Christian schools.
Roughly 200 largely faith-based schools across the country accept the assessment.
Ten of them are in Florida, including Stetson University, Ave Maria University, Reformation Bible College, Palm Beach Atlantic University, Pensacola Christian College and Trinity Baptist College.
Even though DeSantis isn’t directly involved in these conversations, he’s made it clear he’ll do just about anything to appease Republican voters and infuriate everyone else. Denigrating the sort of tests most high school students take to get into college (especially out-of-state ones) by giving them an incentive to take a less-vetted test with roots in the conservative Christian world seems like low-hanging fruit for him.
It could hurt students, though, especially if these informal talks lead to the DeSantis administration pressuring schools to adopt the CLT
over the other, more popular, tests. That would limit the options for Florida high school students applying to college since most schools don’t accept CLT scores. Also, if more in-state colleges accept the CLT, there’s less reason for public high schools to offer students the chance to take the
PSAT/NMSQT which could give them access to scholarship money.
Not that the administration cares.
Henry Mack, the Florida Department of Education Senior Chancellor, celebrated the CLT as an alternative to… Critical Race Theory. Given that the ACT/SAT have nothing to do with CRT, good luck trying to figure out what the point of this tweet is other than to send a racist dog whistle to other Republicans.
www.msnbc.com
negro no
Democratic Plantation
But it's funny to see this guy perform Olympic level gymnastics to overlook all of the fukk shyt that Cornel is involved in