Episode Details

There's no shortage of critiques of our standardized college entrance exams, and yet every school year, millions of students sign up to take the SAT and ACT. These assessments have defined academic achievement in America for generations because college admissions mandate participation. 

But what if we wrote a better test? What if we created an exam with passages longer than 150 words and restricted calculator use to require proof of mathematical reasoning? What if the reading sections that appeared on the exam bore even a passing resemblance to the kind of texts that belonged on a high school reading list? 

In 2015, Jeremy Tate proposed to answer those very questions with the Classic Learning Test. He joined Test Corrections to discuss the mechanics of building a testing company, the politics of assessment, and whether one test can really reconnect knowledge and virtue.