Classic Learning Test launches Teaching Corps for college graduates

America is entering an era of unprecedented education entrepreneurship, and one trailblazer is working to bring truth, goodness and beauty back to the classroom.

His name is Jeremy Tate, who 10…

America is entering an era of unprecedented education entrepreneurship, and one trailblazer is working to bring truth, goodness and beauty back to the classroom.

His name is Jeremy Tate, who 10 years was a high school English teacher frustrated that “transcendent, moral, and ethical ideas had been gutted from the classroom.”

He decided standardized tests were a big part of the problem, and so he founded the Classic Learning Test (CLT) – an alternative to the SAT and ACT – in 2015.

Now, he’s launching the Classical Teaching Corps, a program enabling college graduates to teach for two years at a classical school while furthering their own education. 

“A lot of the new classical schools [are] growing like wildfire, and a lot of them have a need for great teachers,” Tate told The Lion in an exclusive interview. 

Classical Teaching Corps was inspired by Teach For America – but naturally with a classical emphasis. 

“At the classical school, there’s a very different telos, a very different goal,” Tate explained. “[It’s] the cultivation of virtue, it’s growing in wisdom. I think everything follows that goal.” 

Participants in the inaugural Classical Teaching Corps will spend the summer of 2025 preparing at one of three colleges – Benedictine College in Kansas, Belmont Abbey in North Carolina or Eastern University in Pennsylvania. 

Then they’ll teach for two years at a classical school. 

“[The summer training includes] some classroom management and emphasis on discipline and that sort of thing, but we also want students to get drawn into this vision for education,” Tate explained. “What is the point of education? What most kids, even at [a school of education], they’re going to mostly tell you answers about getting a good job.  

“There’s a different understanding of what education is in the classical education world. We understand this as an apprenticeship model. We want young college graduates [to be at] great classical schools where they’re going to be part of the culture.” 

The Classical Teaching Corps only has capacity for 100 students in its first year but Tate hopes it grows to 1,000 before 2030.  

And he says K-12 schools are chomping at the bit to hire CLT’s new teachers.  

“Most teachers that a classical school is presented with as potential new hires, they’ve received a really terrible formation and they’ve been fed a lot of these very, very progressive ideas, and they’re fed these ideas like they’re dogma,” Tate told The Lion. “There’s a real hunger for the tried and true.” 

He said the Classical Teaching Corps will partner with 20-30 schools to place its teachers in its first year, but it has already received more applicants than it can supply with teachers. 

“We’ll actually have to [turn] schools away, unfortunately,” Tate said. “We want to make sure we’re sending these young people [to where] it’s going to be a great, enriching formative experience [and where] they’ll be able to catch the bug of classical education.”