A private Christian school in Mebane recently ranked 5th in the nation for its students’ performance on college entrance exams that are administered to high school juniors and seniors enrolled in classical schools and are accepted by more than 300 U.S. colleges and universities.
Bradford Academy’s average scores on the Classical Learning Test (CLT), the standardized tests administered at the high school level, have been ranked fifth in the nation for 2025 and seventh in 2024, according to the school’s administration.
Bradford Academy is currently housed within Grace Reformed Baptist Church along South Third Street in Mebane (see separate story about future expansion plans, this edition).
Bradford Academy is a private, K-12 classical Christian school that follows “the Trivium,” or the three pillars of a classical liberal education: grammar, logic, and reason.
“The CLT is a new college entrance exam that is angling to compete with the ACT and SAT,” Bradford Academy headmaster Jeffrey Johnston elaborated in a recent interview with The Alamance News. “In some areas, it is more rigorous; the use of classical tests puts it more in line with the way the SAT used to be.”
“Because we are a classical school and we have our kids read from the canon of great books, we tend to be more focused on books that have stood the test of time,” Johnston said in the interview. “We decided to use the test that aligns more closely with our vision for education.”
North Carolina’s Division of Nonpublic Education (DNPE) has also recognized the CLT exam as an acceptable college entrance exam, the headmaster added. “Smaller liberal arts colleges tend to recognize it. I don’t know of any UNC System schools that recognize it.”
At the same time, Bradford Academy graduates have gone on to attend UNC-Chapel Hill, N.C. State University, and Appalachian State University, as well as private institutions such as Anderson University in South Carolina and Liberty University in Virginia, Johnston explained.
More than 1,000 classical K-12 schools in the U.S. administer the CLT to juniors and seniors each year, based on information furnished by Adam Roate, senior partnerships director for CLT, the organization that administers the exam.
“Our [seventh and fifth-place] finishes nationally the last two years place us in the top 1 percent of those schools in the nation,” Rick Vogel, the director of business operations and development for Bradford Academy, told the newspaper.
“For a young school like ours, we’re pretty proud of that,” said Johnston, who founded Bradford Academy in 2008.
While the SAT and ACT measure reading and math skills, the CLT measures critical thinking ability and logic by incorporating classical literary and historical texts into the reading comprehension section; the math section incorporates multi-step problems, according to an analysis of the CLT published on May 15 by researchers at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative-leaning public policy organization based in Washington, D.C. . [The authors of the analysis contend that the CLT requires “deep comprehension of classic texts” in advocating for the exam to be used as an entrance exam for military service academies such as the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, along with the U.S. Naval, Air Force, and Coast Guard academies.]
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Students in grades kindergarten through five are taught songs, rhymes, and memorization – of everything from multiplication tables to famous poems – to begin building a foundation in natural science, math, and grammar, according to a description of the curriculum at Bradford Academy.
Middle school students at Bradford begin their school day with prayer, singing, and discussion of a Bible passage before moving into lessons in algebra, science, English composition, and literature, as well as special classes in art, music, logic, and Latin, according to the school.
At the high school level, “students may begin in songs and prayer, then move right into science to study genetic traits in fruit fly populations.” Lessons in areas such as civics rely on works such as the U.S. Constitution and The Federalist Papers, as well as works with opposing viewpoints, such as The Communist Manifesto, along with the canonical works of Plato and other classical philosophers.
A database compiled by The Heritage Foundation reveals that there are currently 43 K-12 classical schools in North Carolina; and of those, 25 K-12 classical schools, including Bradford Academy, have a non-denominational Christian affiliation.
“We’ve probably got more ethnic diversity than average, compared to other private schools,” Bradford Academy’s headmaster pointed out in the interview. “One of the things that sets us apart is we don’t allow only Christians [to enroll].”
However, parents of prospective students “must agree to let Bradford Academy teach according to its principles, which are fairly Christian and fairly biblical,” Johnston added.
Bradford Academy’s plans for future site have changed; read the latest here: https://alamancenews.com/bradford-academy-now-eyeing-first-baptist-church-property-instead-of-nc-119-for-future-school-site/
