The SAT Versus the Classic Learning Test

The CLT’s goal is to connect students with truth, goodness, and beauty. It is poised to become the United States’ No. 1 college entrance test.

SAT test preparation books sit on a shelf at a Barnes and Noble store in New York City on June 27, 2002. Mario Tama/Getty Images

Commentary

Reading the SAT (Practice Test No. 10), I find myself learning about the obscure painter Jacob Lawrence, whose modernist paintings would be passed over by 99 percent of Americans as nothing more significant than a weird, high school art project. We are left to assume that Lawrence’s prominent location on the SAT is derived from the fact that he is an African American. But shouldn’t we be judging his paintings—to paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr.—on the content of their character, not on the color of the painter’s skin?