FairTest Senior Director of Advocacy Akil Bello expounds on the Classical Learning Test, Florida’s latest culture war gambit that turns out to be just another highly suspect and flawed standardized test.
In his continued assault on public education and American ideals of equality, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has exposed that assessment creation and adoption is far from objective.
In astatementannouncing the approvalof the Classic Learning Test (CLT)for use to admit students to Florida institutions of higher education, the Florida Department of Education touted that the test will “reach a wider variety of students” and “better serving students.”
Despite this lofty rhetoric, this is merely the latest example of DeSantis’s very public attempts to remake public education to align with his vision.
Sadly, using hyperbolic word salad to justify and disguise other ulterior motives is as American as apple pie.
The Racist Roots of Aptitude Testing
The SAT’s origin story as a scholarship test developed to bring more under-resourced students to Harvard University is a prime example of ideology guiding test selection and marketing disguising motivation. The myth of the “scholarship test” hides that its guiding principles were that intelligence was innate, racially determined, disconnected from learning, and measurable using Greek, Latin, vocabulary, geometry, and algebra.
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