Perhaps you remember the television show Whose Line Is It Anyway?, in which the host (often Drew Carey) would remind viewers that it was a show “where everything’s made up and the points don’t matter.”
I’ve been thinking about that line as I reflect on the themes explored in recent posts. Over the past several weeks, I’ve written about collaborative governance and organizational trust, the limitations of the credit hour as the organizing principle of theological education (and Part Two), and the distinction between input-based and outcome-based learning. Each of these conversations points toward a larger question: what happens when we begin reexamining the assumptions that quietly shape our educational systems?
This particular series emerged from a recent gathering hosted by the Novare Center for Organizational Formation which included academic and executive leaders representing a diversity of seminaries and universities. This group met together from April 6 – 8, 2026, in Bentonville, Arkansas to explore some foundational concepts for the Novare initiative. In the midst of conversation and fellowship, several topics emerged as guiding principles for the group. We spent considerable time talking about and challenging the various assumptions that we take for granted within our sphere of theological education.
One of those assumptions involves grades. For generations, grades have functioned as one of the central currencies of education. Grades help sort students, express achievement, determine eligibility, and often become shorthand for intelligence, effort, or potential. Entire systems have been built around their distribution and interpretation.
Many of the practices surrounding grades reveal just how constructed the system really is. Consider the familiar language of grading “on a curve.” I recall one professor during my graduate school days who would seemingly arbitrarily draw a line at various points on the grading scale to make sure the students were “distributed” properly. In those systems, student performance is evaluated relative to the performance of others as opposed to any true measurement against a standard. A bell curve assumes that a certain percentage of students will perform exceptionally well, most will cluster in the middle, and some will struggle. Grades are often shaped by comparison as much as demonstrated understanding. Conversations about “grade inflation” reveal similar assumptions. The language itself suggests that grades primarily function as a mechanism for differentiation and ranking.
But what happens if the goal shifts? What happens if the primary question centers on whether the learner can demonstrate understanding and application? In an outcome-based framework, grades begin to function differently.
The emphasis centers on proficiency and demonstrated understanding. The central concern becomes the learner’s ability to demonstrate the knowledge, skills, and capacities the course was designed to cultivate and achieve. That shift also changes the meaning of assessment and metrics.
In most areas of life, proficiency is not something we think about in terms of percentages. A clinical counselor carries responsibility for caring for a client. A pilot carries responsibility for safely operating the aircraft. In those contexts, capability matters deeply because the outcomes carry real-world consequences.
The same principle increasingly applies within educational conversations focused on outcomes and formation. Human learning remains complex, developmental, and deeply contextual. At the same time, many grading systems create an appearance of precision even when transformation, understanding, or ability remain difficult to discern.
This becomes especially important in theological education. If the goal is formation for ministry, leadership, and service within God’s kingdom, then assessment must engage questions of wisdom, discernment, contextual understanding, and faithful application alongside academic mastery.
Those realities are often difficult to quantify and yet they represent some of the most significant dimensions of theological formation. An outcome-based approach may actually require greater rigor and clarity. Faculty must articulate what proficiency looks like within a course or program. Students must demonstrate meaningful understanding and application. Assessment becomes an exercise in discerning growth, understanding, and readiness.
That kind of shift also changes the role of failure. The conversation increasingly focuses on identifying what support, practice, or additional formation may help the student reach proficiency. This creates space for patience, flexibility, and sustained engagement with the learning process.
As I’ve suggested throughout this series, that kind of environment also requires trust. Trust allows organizations to hold traditional metrics more lightly while continuing to pursue accountability and rigor. It creates space to prioritize demonstrated learning over inherited assumptions about how learning must be measured.
Grades may continue to serve a meaningful role within theological education, though their function and significance need to be reconsidered. Within that framework, grades function as one limited tool for recognizing growth, understanding, and readiness for what comes next.
And perhaps that shift, like so many others we are exploring, invites us to ask not simply how theological education has traditionally functioned, but what it is truly meant to cultivate.
- Brent C. Sleasman, President