Are Standardized Tests Being Compromised? | Office Hours with Jeremy Tate

On Office Hours with Jeremy Tate, Jeremy and Soren dive into the most recent, need-to-know news surrounding the education renewal movement. Tune in to hear about how the SAT and ACT are making efforts to “evolve” and “adapt” with the times, leading to watered-down assessments that are more focused on convenience rather than achievement. Jason Bedrick, a friend of CLT, published an article outlining how classical education offers hope for civic renewal in America. Plus, we get to hear the inspiring story of a family that dropped everything and uprooted themselves to get their kids a classical education.

Transcript

Soren - CLT (00:01.132)
The SAT and ACT are making efforts to evolve and adapt with the times. But does it just lead to watered -down assessments that are more focused on convenience rather than achievement? Our friend Jason Bedrick from Heritage published an article outlining how classical education offers hope for civic renewal in America. Plus, we get to hear the inspiring story of a family that dropped everything and uprooted themselves to get their kids a classical education.

My name is Soren Schwab, and this is Office Hours with Jeremy Tate.

Soren - CLT (00:37.004)
Welcome back to the Anchored Podcast and thank you for joining us for another episode of Office Hours. I'm joined here with none other than our founder and CEO, Jeremy Tate. How are you, sir?

Jeremy Tate (00:47.767)
Lauren, I'm great. I'm great. It's a funny time to of do current events, podcasts with so much of the noise being sucked out with the political conventions and of course, the big news nationally with the assassination attempt. But I still think the most exciting news is this movement and the things that we're going to talk about today. So I'll always love doing this with you,

Soren - CLT (01:08.482)
Absolutely, no, I agree. I agree and we'll get right into it. A lot of changes come into standardized testing. I don't know if you could have predicted that when you founded CLT. Obviously you wanted to disrupt, but it looks now you're actually leading the way and other organizations are following. So when you founded CLT, two hours, 120 questions, right? Pretty straightforward.

What thinking went into that because now we're seeing SAT, AC, ACD, ACD kind of going that same way. You're surprised by

Jeremy Tate (01:40.907)
Yeah, so I spent a ton of time thinking about this because for most companies, most entities, updating, changing, you take an example like Blockbuster and getting pushed out of business right after their high because they couldn't evolve and they were more committed to a product than they were to a mission. Standardized testing, though, is a bit unique and in some ways precisely the value is not changing.

not chasing educational fads. I the current SAT is completely, you can't even recognize the old SAT and the new SAT, right? What they're testing, what they're testing has completely changed by their own admission, right? The test that was founded as the Scholastic Aptitude Test, now the CEO says they have removed every last trace of aptitude testing, because they say that that's not fair.

And so it's been a really wild story. And the fact that there are still people out there who think that the SAT is some kind of fixed, non -evolving assessment is really, really wild. It's completely different than the test has set out to be.

Soren - CLT (02:47.744)
Yeah, no, absolutely. It's changed significantly. And I sometimes, and I know that's completely true, but I sometimes tell schools when they ask, well, why is there another test? said, well, if the SAT, we're still the SAT from the 70s and 80s, maybe there wouldn't be a need for CLT, right? Very different tests from the ACT. But now they're going digital, digital only. And there will be adaptive tests, which for our listeners that don't know,

Jeremy Tate (03:01.399)
I agree, totally.

Soren - CLT (03:13.61)
Essentially the questions you encounter as you move through the test depend on how you answer prior questions. So you're essentially presented with questions tailored to your abilities, which is very different from CLT. So that's a big change. But I think one thing too, we haven't even talked about content, which is really interesting. And I quote here from a spokesperson for the SAT, quote, questions are also more concise.

For instance, lengthy reading passages were replaced with shorter versions. Only one question, rather than multiple, is tied to each reading. We still want students to have rich texts that they need to read, understand, analyze, and answer questions about. But these walls of text were just not going to work on a digital device, which is fascinating.

Jeremy Tate (04:08.118)
Yeah.

Soren - CLT (04:10.642)
It is still a college entrance exam, but a student is not asked to read by their own admission, a rich test, text that they need to read, understand, analyze. mean, what's going on

Jeremy Tate (04:21.623)
Yeah. So how does it become valuable for colleges in any sense that ought to be having students read and understand, lengthy works, long passages, right? If the college board is not assessing a student's ability to pay attention for five minutes, right? We're talking about reading passages that are now capped at 150 words, as short as 20 words, right? Talking about a short text or a tweet or something, right? So I don't have, you know, Soren,

that big of issue with adaptive testing and it's actually not new. The College Board is late to adaptive testing like everything else. Adaptive testing is not our concern at CLT. Our concern is just the impoverished content that they're using their bias against the Christian Catholic Western intellectual tradition, censoring that tradition out in so many ways. That's our real concern with the College Board for sure.

Soren - CLT (05:15.37)
Absolutely, and as you know, if it's not on the test, it might not get taught. And so now, if students to get into the Harvards and the Yales are simply asked to read and understand tweets, then how is that going to impact what high schools are going to teach to prepare those students to get into these quote unquote elite institution? It's certainly a sobering trend that I tweeted at the college board and said, hey, maybe you want to take a look at

Jeremy Tate (05:29.473)
Yeah.

Soren - CLT (05:41.93)
an online CLT because we're proving that it is possible to read a lengthy passage on a digital device and answer

Jeremy Tate (05:48.639)
Well, I think this gets into actually very quickly into a conversation about moral formation, right? It is a task that goes beyond, and we talk about the ability to put a phone away, put distractions away, and to focus on a text and to contemplate it for more than a few minutes. We're talking then about what kind of person you are, right? Have you cultivated that discipline?

to be able to, it's talking about, we're talking about discipline. Have you cultivated that discipline to be able to do that? And I think that's where we get to the fact that we have an entirely different vision for what education is than the college board. They've abandoned education as human formation, as moral formation, and they're gonna continue to spiral until they can recover something transcendent and true.

Soren - CLT (06:34.476)
Certainly, and we haven't talked about the ACT and mostly because the news from ACT just reached our desk this morning. So we haven't even been able to read through everything carefully, but the ACT too is evolving. ACT obviously was formed as a, so to speak, a competitor to College Board in the 1950s, clear achievement test, which now of course the SATs as well, but they're evolving to pretty much be more like the SAT, right? And so

Jeremy Tate (07:02.208)
Mm -hmm.

Soren - CLT (07:03.468)
They're emphasizing flexibility, giving students the ability to essentially choose your own adventure on when they take the science section and the reading. you can, you can, let's see here, like the writing section, science will be offered as an additional section. This means students can choose to take the ACT or the ACT plus science or the ACT plus writing or the ACT plus science and writing offering maxable.

Jeremy Tate (07:10.007)
Yeah.

Soren - CLT (07:29.866)
Maximal flexibility so we will see I can't comment on that too much yet, but but certainly changes Coming to the ACT as well and quite frankly if one likes to look at numbers of ACT recently Then we probably also know why because they've been struggling quite a bit in last few years topic to good friend of ours Jason Bedrick from the Heritage Foundation station wrote a I thought a fascinating

in the daily signal called rising trend of classical education offers hope for civic renewal. And you mentioned obviously our current events and, you know, free people requires an education in the civic knowledge and virtues necessary to preserve liberty, right? That goes back to our founding, but you've been ringing the alarm bells for a while now that America's education system is currently failing in this duty

Jeremy Tate (08:00.759)
Yeah.

Soren - CLT (08:28.162)
And so let me just give you a couple of examples about history and civic education and how alarming that is. And then let's talk about the potential solution here. According to the Annenberg Public Policy Center's annual survey, one third of American adults cannot name the three branches of government and 17 % can name any branch at all. Likewise, only 5%. 5 % of Americans could name all five freedoms guaranteed on the First Amendment. 20 % couldn't name

Jeremy Tate (08:37.6)
Yeah.

Soren - CLT (08:57.858)
One more that earlier this year, US Chamber of Commerce found that more than 70 % of Americans failed a basic test of civic literacy on quote, basic functions of our democracy, end quote. I can go on and on and on, national assessment of education progress and whatnot. But the reality is that it seems like we are letting go of the teaching of history, of civic knowledge. Do you have a sense of where that's coming from?

Jeremy Tate (09:12.503)
Hmm.

Soren - CLT (09:27.682)
how we got

Jeremy Tate (09:28.215)
Hmm. Yeah, you know, and I think the problem is twofold, right? It's a knowledge problem, but it's also a heart problem. And this is why I'm so encouraged with what the classical schools are doing. And I think it's great and I commend the efforts of governors around the country and Bill of Rights and everyone else.

to try to have a civics class added that we have a crisis of civic knowledge and we don't know, as you just said, how many branches of government are in most, know, 81 % of people under 45 can't pass the US citizenship test. So that is a crisis. But what the classical schools understand is that you don't just need to know, but you need to love freedom. You need to love America's founding ideals. You need to believe that they're actually worth fighting

I saw a map recently of Europe and America and the percentage of young people that are willing to fight for their country. And it's extremely low, right? And the rest of the world is watching that. It's because we haven't cultivated a love for freedom, a love for self -government, right? And it's at a point now, Soren, I really think it's a national security threat. But praise God that these classical schools are absolutely blowing up. And I think classical ed is the answer.

to the crisis and I love Jason and I love that he made this bridge, he made this connection. Classical education is the answer to the civics crisis.

Soren - CLT (10:47.65)
Yeah, no, absolutely. Of course, as an immigrant to this country, I was shocked because of course I moved here because I love America and the ideals of America. Now I often find myself as the one defending the country that I moved to because, you know, America is this or that. But it starts, it does, it starts in schools. And I was shocked the other day, my wife told me one of her nephews, he's 10 years old, is not unfortunately going to a classical school. And...

Jeremy Tate (10:58.913)
Mm.

Soren - CLT (11:15.81)
And they spent 4th of July together and they had conversations and again, 10 years old, but he was talking about how stupid, he probably used a different word, America is and that it is so racist. And it is so this and he was, and of course he didn't quite know and when pushed couldn't really answer that. But that's what we're instilling, right? Like this sense that we are not a country worth defending or

Jeremy Tate (11:25.429)
Mm -hmm.

Jeremy Tate (11:37.183)
Yeah, yeah, and I think we're seeing now that even though the optimistic projections about the growth of classical education, they're being surpassed, you in big ways. mean, you know this, they can't keep up with demand. We're about to talk about a great story of families moving across country to find these kind of schools. And so my hope and prayer is that it's not too late. mean, there is a country to save and to do that. We have to recover real education, which is classical education.

Soren - CLT (12:04.898)
Yeah, yeah, and board member at Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, and I quote him here, he did say, classical education gives us the chance to rekindle the flame of the West before it out. So just to give you some statistics, you've probably heard those before, but maybe our audience has not. But according to a recent analysis by Arcadia Education, more than 670 ,000 students attended over 1500 classical schools during the 2023 -24 school

Jeremy Tate (12:16.498)
Mm. Mm.

Soren - CLT (12:34.626)
And Arcadia is projecting that by 2035, more than 1 .4 million students will be enrolled in classical schools, either in schools or at home. And quite honestly, I think that's low. I venture a guess and say that that might actually be more than that. And why is that? talk about our third topic, because families are flocking to these schools, literally uprooting their lives. Because there is still a, of course, there's

Jeremy Tate (12:47.617)
Mm -hmm.

Jeremy Tate (12:59.489)
Yeah.

Soren - CLT (13:04.406)
There's high demand, but there's not as many schools out there just yet. And so this story, I believe it was in the Federalist by the wonderful Christie Elliot Rivers titled, moved my family across the country for classical education and you can, what an inspiring story. Jeremy, why don't you share some of the highlights from

Jeremy Tate (13:21.697)
Hmm.

Jeremy Tate (13:26.027)
Well, it rung true with me because we've met so many of these families, right? And you've been in way more K -12 classical schools than I have. But you know this, we go down to Regence of Austin, we go to Veritas and Richmond, we meet these families that have given up, did exactly what Christine did, and they wanted to go to a classical Lutheran school and they packed up everything, sacrificed everything. And what I think about Tucson is what that communicates to the kids, right?

I remember when I was at Mountain of Sales Academy, a dad said, we just moved into one of the worst neighborhoods in Baltimore because that's how bad I wanted my daughter to get an education here at Mountain of Sales Academy. When kids see their parents sacrificing everything so they can get the best possible education, it's a beautiful story. But people back home also take notes. Hey man, we're losing families that we're not providing the kind of education. Why is everybody moving to Florida?

Okay, because you got amazing classical charter schools in Florida. You've got amazing, you know, classical Christian schools and Catholic schools, and they're being able to use their own taxpayer dollars now to do that. So I was inspired in reading what Christina and her family did. And also just, it made me remember so many great conversations. I remember like, it was like a back to school night at Veritas I got to go to a few years ago with Keith Nix and met so many of these families and many of them had relocated as well.

to be in that community and to have their kids receive that kind of education.

Soren - CLT (14:52.694)
Yeah, and truly it's a change in culture. I thought the article was so nuanced as well, because it wasn't a blind, you get your kid in a classical school and magically everything is going to be solved. Right. And one thing that Christine is pointing out that, and I quote, the school did not magically raise our children for us. We found a school that would partner with us and support what we do at home. We did not want a school that would contradict us for eight hours a day. We wanted teachers who shared our values and would teach our children the things

we believe to be valuable. But even just that, right? When you're looking at the language and the rhetoric of some of the teachers unions, you they're our children, right? Like either you bring them to and classical school understand that parents are the primary educators. And even just that was probably not controversial to say 10, 15 years ago, but it seems now even to be divisive come November that the parents are the primary educators and the school's role is to partner with families. And that's probably the experience that you've had

Jeremy Tate (15:31.348)
Yeah.

Soren - CLT (15:51.446)
Want to see

Jeremy Tate (15:51.874)
I really loved, and maybe that perspective, my understanding is that she actually is a teacher at the school as well now. It's easy to actually idealize a lot of these classical schools, and they are great, they are wonderful, but a lot of them are also very new. Once you kind of get, there's growing pains with that as well. I think it's important that we're all trying to recover.

this beautiful vision for education that was almost lost, right? And I thought that it was, as you said, a very nuanced perspective of was it worth the sacrifice? Absolutely, but it's not just get your kids into classical school and you've done your job, right? The parents are still the first and primary educators. And what's so fun for me as a dad, I didn't receive this kind of education. I a little bit in seminary, I did for sure and was exposed to it,

I feel like I get to be on, my kids are at Divine Mercy Academy and I get to be on, I've never read Johnny Tremaine before, reading that with my boy Johnny. I get to kind of have a second education as well and a lot of parents are experiencing that with their kids right now. It's a beautiful thing.

Soren - CLT (16:58.068)
Amazing amazing. Well Jeremy before I let you go Twitter X has been has been a really good platform for CLT for you personally and just recently our marketing team we've kind of Started doing some what are called threads Twitter threads And so if for our audience check it out even you don't have to get an account on Twitter But you can still look at them But we had one with the most beautiful libraries in the world and just recently one with the most beautiful bookstores

in the world and just maybe a little brief preview. Do you have a favorite bookstore of that list?

Jeremy Tate (17:33.943)
You know, I think, well the first thing that comes to mind is why did these kind of threads blow up? You we think about some of our friends, know, culture critic and others, and I think it reflects kind of this deep, deep hunger for beauty, you know, that we see. But look, I'm biased. My personal favorite's gonna be Goldberry. I believe it's number 21 on that list in Concord, North Carolina, founded by Searcy Foulkes, the Kern family. Certainly the one that I would recommend.

over over any other what's your favorite torn.

Soren - CLT (18:04.418)
I actually haven't been able to look at, I haven't looked at the thread yet. So I can't tell you on the list, but I was just recently in Paris and went to Shakespeare and Company in Paris. not only the bookstore itself, it's not the most beautiful one, but just the history and knowing, you know, that James Joyce wrote Ulysses, you know, in a corner at that. mean, that is just, it was a really, really, really special moment in a special bookstore. So that would probably be my favorite.

Jeremy Tate (18:22.465)
Wow.

Jeremy Tate (18:29.897)
And people are so hungry for this, you know, and I think that's why we keep seeing these kind of things blowing up on social media.

Soren - CLT (18:32.703)
Absolutely.

Soren - CLT (18:38.082)
Amazing, amazing. Well, Jeremy, as always, thank you so much. This has been delightful and I already look forward to our next Office Hour.

Jeremy Tate (18:45.633)
Doren, thank you brother, great to chat.