Because of Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida may be the launch pad for a movement to end the wokeism in college-entrance exams.
In an interview with the Florida Standard that was posted Friday, Jeremy Tate, founder of a standardized college admissions exam called the Classic Learning test (CLT), said the decision by DeSantis, state lawmakers and the Board of Education to accept the CLT may be the end of the SAT as the gold standard for such tests.
As The Free Press has reported, Florida’s Republican governor and the College Board, which administers the SAT and AP courses used by high schools nationwide, have battled over the wokeism in the board’s academic products.
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Last week, according to The Free Press, the board announced that it would refuse the state’s request to change the materials in an Advanced Placement Psychology in order to comply with the Parental Rights in Education law.
The 2022 law, which was updated this year, bans school districts and classroom teachers from using lesson plans rooted in sexual orientation and gender identity in grades K-8. In higher grades, the instruction material “must be in a manner that is age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards,” the Department of Education says.
The College Board’s decision came after it changed and then reverted back to anti-white materials in an African American Studies AP course.
DeSantis in February noted, “This College Board, like, nobody elected them to anything. They’re providing service — and you can either utilize those services or not.”
Tate told the Florida Standard that’s what he’s hoping for.
Tate, a longtime guidance counselor, told the Standard that he had heard educators complain about the SAT for years, and expected someone to create an alternative. When that did not happen, he did it himself.
“The College Board is a pretty radical organization. They don’t try to hide it,” Tate told the Standard. “They’re very much one-sided [politically]. Most of the source material leans heavily into 20th century progressives and they really ignore the Western intellectual tradition that was foundational for America.”
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Liberals, consequently, blamed the fact that black and Hispanic students did not perform as well as whites and Asians on the SAT itself and not the people taking it. As a result, the board changed the test, and did not demand students do better or work harder.
“It’s very different from the [SAT] test that it always was [historically],” Tate continued. “They got rid of every trace of aptitude testing. All the things that anybody who’s 35 or older remembers from the SAT – logic questions, analogies – totally gone.”
Tate asserted that his test is part of a “classic renewal movement” in education — something that is occurring in Florida with DeSantis and the GOP-dominated Legislature moving to promote universal school choice, boost parents’ rights, render teachers’ unions impotent, end DEI bureaucracies, and ban instruction in Critical Race Theory, gender identity, and sexual orientation.
“The goal of education was always about human formation, especially the cultivation of virtue,” Tate told the Standard. “It’s why you educated the next generation. You’re passing down an inheritance. You’re teaching them integrity.”
“I think there’s a lot of synergy between the state of Florida and CLT,” Tate added.
“CLT is growing in the same direction that I think the state wants to go, in terms of, ‘Let’s get all the new, crazy ideology out and let’s return to the tried and true: reading, math, arithmetic, founding documents.’”
As Tate’s website, CLTexam.com, noted, DeSantis in May signed a law that made Florida the first state in the nation to fund all school districts to utilize the CLT for 11th graders. Simultaneously, New College of Florida announced it would be the first public university in Florida to accept the CLT for admissions, followed by the University of South Florida.
Last month, the state Board of Governors approved CLT as an admissions test for all Florida public universities.
“When we first started saying that [the CLT would replace the SAT] people kind of laughed,” Tate told the Standard. “Now, with Florida, it’s a lot more real.”
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