Even if Texas lawmakers succeed in passing universal school choice this year, the educational establishment will continue to foist flawed college entrance exams and politicized curricula on Texas students, unless the legislature also acts to ensure freedom of choice in these areas.
The College Board, the $2 billion corporation that administers the SAT exam, has abandoned its mission to provide educational products free from political agendas. The chairman of the College Board has called for implementing “anti-racism”—a radical philosophy that advocates for racial discrimination to pursue so-called “equity.” The College Board issued a statement condemning the Supreme Court ruling that finally put an end to the consideration of race in college admissions.
Along with pushing political agendas, the College Board has degraded its products in recent years, including the SAT—making the test significantly easier over time.
SAT administrators reduced the length of reading passages to extremely short paragraphs, followed by a single comprehension question instead of multiple questions. The SAT is testing students’ ability to comprehend tweets rather than complex passages.
A recent analysis provides evidence that the math section of the SAT has also gotten easier over time.
The Harvard class of 2025 boasted an average SAT score of 1494 out of 1600. Despite this high score, Harvard recently announced that it would offer a remedial math course for students lacking “foundational algebra skills” because so many students were unprepared for advanced math, demonstrating the decline in the SAT’s value as a measure of college readiness.
Unfortunately, Texas provides significant advantages to the SAT. Texas law requires public colleges to automatically admit students who graduated in the top ten percent of their high school class and achieved certain scores on either the SAT or the ACT. By only providing these two options, Texas is endorsing a duopoly in testing, preventing superior exams from emerging.
Other exam providers such as the Classic Learning Test, or CLT, represent potential opportunities for increased competition and quality compared to the existing SAT and ACT offerings. Unlike the SAT, the CLT challenges students to read and analyze excerpts from classic and historical texts. Over 290 colleges and universities already accept the CLT for admission.
Building on similarly successful steps in Florida, Texas legislators have introduced a bill that would expand testing options to the CLT and other competitors that may emerge. This legislation would end the SAT and ACT duopoly, allowing alternative exams to stand or fall on their own merits.
In addition to expanding choice in testing, Texas must reform the curricula of its public colleges and universities that prioritize indoctrination over real education.
The Goldwater Institute, where I work, revealed that at least five public universities in Texas force students to take politicized courses in “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) just to obtain their degrees. These DEI requirements cost students and state taxpayers approximately $100 million or more over each four-year period.
The University of Texas at Austin, for example, requires students to take a course that examines “systemic barriers to equality and inclusiveness” erected against “underrepresented cultural groups” in the United States. This course also requires students to reflect on how they can “minimize marginalization in the U.S.” These requirements promote a leftist view of American society that sees a multitude of “oppressed” groups held back by the schemes of “oppressors.” This activist agenda masquerading as academics should have no place in core university requirements.
Fortunately, legislative champions in Texas have introduced a bill that ends mandatory DEI coursework, freeing students to take courses with greater rigor and more relevance to their chosen fields.
These reforms of college entrance testing and college curricula, combined with universal school choice, will empower parents and students to select educational programs that prioritize academic excellence, rejecting the lowering of standards and the politicization of teaching. By enacting these policies, Texas can take the lead in refocusing education on achievement and merit.
Timothy K. Minella is a Senior Fellow at the Goldwater Institute’s Van Sittert Center for Constitutional Advocacy.
