Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) secured language in the Senate defense policy bill requiring military service academies to accept the Classical Learning Test as an admissions option and Department of Defense Education Activity schools to offer the exam as one of three nationally recognized standardized tests.
The provision was included in the version of the National Defense Authorization Act advanced by the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday. The provision next heads to the Senate floor as part of the annual defense policy bill process.
Banks exclusively told Breitbart News, “I was proud to secure this amendment to help our military academies attract the best and brightest young Americans. We should be looking for future military leaders in as many places as possible and accepting the CLT exam is an important step in that direction.”
The NDAA language comes after Banks introduced the Promoting Classical Learning Act in May 2025, a bill aimed at requiring U.S. military service academies, including West Point and the Naval Academy, to accept the CLT in addition to the SAT and ACT.
The earlier Banks bill also would have required federally operated secondary schools, including schools overseen by the Department of War and the Bureau of Indian Education, to administer the CLT to 11th-grade students. The War Department operates 161 schools.
At the time, Banks called the CLT “the standard for academic excellence” and said his proposal would help ensure the service academies recruit top students to lead and defend the country.
Jeremy Tate launched the CLT in 2015 as an alternative standardized test. The exam covers math, reading comprehension, and knowledge of texts tied to classical learning.
Tate also backed Banks’s proposal, saying service academy applicants should be allowed to show their academic ability through a test grounded in the classical tradition.
The CLT is now accepted by more than 280 institutes of higher education. Arkansas and Florida have approved the exam for use in public schools, while classical schools, religious schools, and homeschool families have increasingly built curricula around preparing for the test.
Banks’s office has also criticized the College Board, which administers the SAT, as a “taxpayer-funded monopoly” that influences school curricula nationwide despite being unelected and unaccountable.
The push also followed War Secretary Pete Hegseth’s early May statement that he would direct military academies to accept the CLT.
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