Introducing the Classical Baccalaureate Substack

Join us on our journey to replace the AP and IB educational ecosystems with a humane and classical alternative.

Dear educators, parents, students, and all readers passionate about preserving access to classical education:

Welcome to the new Substack for the Classical Baccalaureate! We are excited to invite you to join us as we prepare to launch our revolutionary educational ecosystem in Spring 2027. Designed to help colleges and universities finally give classically educated students the credit they deserve, Classical Baccalaureate exists to establish universally recognizable markers that show off the impressive work these students are already accomplishing in the classroom.

It is well known that, for better or worse, the modern education model pressures teachers to organize their curriculum around tests that will determine their students’ future success. Unfortunately, most of those tests prioritize falling standards, job preparation, and political fads in their structure and design. CLT was founded in 2014 to break that cycle by offering a better standardized test. Now Classical Baccalaureate is furthering CLT’s mission by offering alternatives to AP and IB programs, allowing schools to fully engage in the liberal arts tradition while still providing their students competitive advantages.

Until now, colleges have relied on programs like AP and IB to help them identify quality applicants in an academic system plagued with threats like grade inflation and AI-generated application essays. Meanwhile, classically educated students are immersing themselves in unabridged works from the Western tradition; they participate in extensive seminars, defend arguments orally and in writing, study conceptual science, and read Euclid’s Elements for mathematics. They are required to synthesize and reason at a level far beyond most other students, but admissions officers have no way to see just how prepared for college work they really are.

Classical Baccalaureate will remedy that problem by offering both courses and exams for college credit and an IB-style diploma evaluation. These will act as universally recognizable markers of true student potential to college admissions offices. The program will seamlessly wrap around a school’s existing mission, leveraging advanced coursework for college recognition, without forcing educators to pivot from timeless explorations of great works like the Iliad or the Federalist Papers to contentious, non-classical content. Students will instead be offered a content-rich alternative to the AP model, focusing on enduring texts, ideas, and disciplines that have shaped Western civilization.

Built to meet the needs of schools as they currently exist, CB will provide flexibility for school administrators to choose their preferred level of involvement in the program. Schools may either replace AP courses or exams on a one-off basis or adopt the full IB-style Diploma Core, featuring components like an extended seminar, thesis, and civics project.

For schools who have already adopted a classical education model, CB validates the work teachers and students are currently doing by transforming their efforts into college recognition and credit. For schools that aren’t classical, CB can provide students with additional opportunities: a public school might offer CB as a track or a new school might launch and leverage CB’s resources to succeed from day one.

Students need a clear path for achieving the increasingly difficult task of gaining admission to their school of choice. At the same time, college tuition costs are rising, and matriculating with credit already in hand may provide financial relief for families. College credit can also benefit students who still want the four-year college experience–an experience for which we strongly advocate–by freeing them to easily double major or pair humanities studies with a highly targeted or technical field that will make them attractive to future employers.

We believe that such advantages do not have to come at the cost of sacrificing quality education. CB is unique in that it has grown organically out of today’s classical renewal movement; it does not represent a restrictive system that will be imposed from the top down by an outside third party. Our program has been designed to pair the best that the classical tradition has to offer with the tools students need to succeed in the real world.

Virtue and college credit. Depth of study and a college acceptance letter. With Classical Baccalaureate, students will truly be equipped with everything they need to flourish as applicants, employees, and human beings.

Visit our website to learn more about Classical Baccalaureate.