Congressional Republicans Target College Board Monopoly With Classical Testing Mandate

Representative Mary Miller has introduced legislation that would fundamentally challenge the College Board’s stranglehold on military academy admissions, and the logic is straightforward: if America’s service academies are meant to produce leaders grounded in American principles, why should they rely exclusively on tests designed by organizations pushing progressive curricula?

The Promoting Classical Learning Act of 2025, introduced in the House on November 7, would mandate that West Point, the Naval Academy, the Air Force Academy, and other service academies accept the Classic Learning Test alongside the SAT and ACT. The bill would also require federally-operated schools to administer the exam to eleventh-grade students.

The facts are these: The College Board, which administers the SAT, has long claimed neutrality while simultaneously pressuring schools to adopt leftist curricula and censoring conservative materials. This is not conjecture. The organization’s track record speaks for itself, and millions of American families who choose private, religious, classical, or homeschool education models have been effectively marginalized by a testing regime that does not reflect their educational values.

“America’s service academies should represent the highest ideals of our nation — courage, integrity and intellect. The Classic Learning Test upholds those same ideals,” Miller said. “Requiring our military academies to accept the CLT will help cultivate a new generation of leaders who are not only exceptionally capable but deeply grounded in the principles that make America strong.”

The legislation, introduced in partnership with Senator Jim Banks of Indiana, would compel both the Department of Defense Education Activity and the Bureau of Indian Education to administer the CLT to all eleventh-grade students in their respective school systems.

Here is what makes this significant: The bill would codify Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s earlier directive that service academies begin accepting the CLT starting with the 2027 admissions cycle, a policy the Pentagon formally announced in September 2025. This is not merely symbolic. This represents a concrete shift away from educational monopolies that have dominated American testing for decades.

Created in 2015 by Jeremy Tate, the CLT assesses reading, writing, and math skills using classical texts drawn from the Western canon. The distinction matters. Rather than aligning with Common Core standards that have demonstrably failed American students, the CLT focuses on timeless texts and principles that have formed the foundation of Western civilization.

The results speak volumes: More than 320 colleges and universities nationwide now accept CLT scores. Florida and Arkansas have approved the exam for use in public schools. More than 120,000 students in Florida alone have taken the test.

This is about more than testing methodology. This is about whether American military leaders will be educated in the principles that made America exceptional or whether they will continue to be filtered through an educational establishment that increasingly views those principles with contempt.

The College Board’s monopoly has gone unchallenged for too long. When a single organization controls access to higher education while simultaneously pushing ideological content, that is not neutrality. That is activism disguised as assessment.

Miller’s legislation offers a solution grounded in common sense: provide an alternative that respects classical education, Western thought, and the millions of families who reject progressive indoctrination. The military academies should welcome students who have been educated in America’s foundational principles, not exclude them because they chose educational paths outside the establishment’s preferred framework.

The question now is whether Congress will act to break the College Board’s monopoly and restore genuine educational diversity to military academy admissions. The answer will reveal much about whether Washington is serious about confronting institutional bias in American education.