We talk a lot in this newsletter about grades that don’t mean what they promise. This week, meet the test that has the same transparency problem.
The Classic Learning Test, or CLT, launched in 2015 as a “values-driven” alternative to the SAT and ACT, built around great book passages and “timeless” academic skills. Florida adopted it in 2023 as an accepted path to a diploma for students who couldn’t clear the state’s reading and algebra graduation exams or hit qualifying SAT/ACT scores.
It worked, in the sense that graduation rates went up. USA Today reports that officials in at least nine Florida districts credit the CLT with their rising numbers. It’s also worked its way up the ladder since: the nation’s military academies and several state university systems now accept the CLT alongside the SAT and ACT.
Here’s the (math) problem. A review by five math-education researchers found the CLT’s quantitative section leans heavily on pre-algebra and middle-school content compared to its rivals. As University of Cincinnati professor Anna DeJarnette put it, a student who struggled with algebra “would have more success on the CLT because there’s a higher proportion of items that come in everything before algebra.”
And unlike the SAT and ACT, which both publish a “college ready” benchmark, the CLT doesn’t have one. Florida sets its own passing score — previously 11 out of 40 possible points, edging up to 14 next year — still nowhere near the rigor implied by “college entrance exam.”
Correct us if we’re wrong, but the Ancient Greeks and Romans probably held a higher standard than doing 35% of their calculations correctly.
If this sounds familiar, it should. New Jersey has run the same playbook on its own graduation test. The state board lowered the passing threshold in 2023. Furthermore, our state built two off-ramps for students who don’t clear that bar. The first is a menu of “substitute competency” scores on the PSAT, SAT, ACT, or Accuplacer set low enough that a student can graduate with an SAT math score of 440. The second is a portfolio appeal process that requires no standardized score at all.
None of this is unique to New Jersey, or to math, or even to 2026. Across the country and across generations, when a graduation requirement threatens to hold back too many students, states don’t fix the preparation gap, they redefine the requirement. New York is phasing out its Regents exams in favor of a “Portrait of a Graduate.” A wave of states dropped exit exams outright over the past decade. Florida’s CLT is just the latest version of states lowering the bar for a diploma.
A diploma is supposed to be a signal. Every one of these lesser pathways makes that signal a little harder to trust.
