Assessment—how we define, evaluate, and pursue quality post-secondary education—reveals the antithesis between secular and Christian worldviews in higher education today. It is a point of departure that exposes the deep divide between belief and unbelief in how we educate our children. Assessment is not a religiously neutral process, but one laden with worldview assumptions and implications. It is a watershed academic issue.

The path an institution chooses on this point will inevitably lead toward blessing or down the dark, secular side of the antithesis. Though secular and Christian colleges may share some common interests in evaluating and improving the quality of their educational efforts and appear quite close on common issues, the direction we take on assessment—the assumptions that guide us, the methods we employ, and the standards we use—will assuredly reveal downstream whether we committed our colleges and future generations of our graduates to a course of belief or unbelief.

How we approach institutional effectiveness and accountability is as important to our institutional faithfulness (or unfaithfulness) as the soundness of our biblical foundation statements. The questions we ask of ourselves, the way we answer, and the standards we use to evaluate our institutions must all be firmly grounded on explicitly Christian assumptions, if we are to hold our Christian institutions accountable Christianly.

The Trinity is our key to a faithfully Christian approach to assessment. The very first tenet all TRACS institutions must affirm in their Biblical Foundation Statements is “1.1.1. the Trinitarian nature of God” (Accreditation Manual, Rev. Ed., 2001, p. 18). The primacy and importance of this doctrine cannot be overstated. However, the implications of the Trinity for Christian life and work are rarely discussed or acknowledged and even more rarely practiced self-consciously. In an age dominated by Unitarian liberalism and polytheistic multiculturalism, our plans for institutional accountability should show our students, our constituents, and the watching world that our institutions and all our academic labors rest on a firm Trinitarian foundation, and no other.

Assessment has become part of the cost of doing academic business in our secular age dominated by government education systems. Our Christian colleges and accrediting bodies cannot escape, at least for the time being, the federal demand for institutional assessment, especially if our institutions take government money. But that does not mean we should think or act like government secularists when we approach assessment, even if we must conform to certain anti-Christian assumptions and expectations. The Department of Education has not specified every aspect of assessment. The DOE basically expects accrediting agencies to require institutions to assess how well their missions are being accomplished and to ensure that each phase of their operations is effective and efficient. Our biblical foundations should make us think like Trinitarians, from start to finish, when we do that and remind us that Christ is the Lord of assessment, too.

B. Assessment and the Location of Our Treasure

Christian colleges have been drawn into the assessment process primarily through their participation in the federal financial aid system and our accrediting bodies, like TRACS, have been charged to oversee the financial interests of the federal government. This governmental encroachment into student financial aid and higher education accreditation is an unhappy story by itself. But it is appropriate, of course, that institutions be held accountable to the government, if they take its money. As Proverbs 22:7 makes clear, “The borrower is servant to the lender.” By accepting government funds, Christian colleges have accepted not just the government’s conditions for taking, keeping, and repaying that money, but also the many strings that come attached, such as a commitment to specific institutional practices (such as affirmative action) and conformity to specific standards for quality assurance (such as assessment). Assessment has become a principal means by which the government can exercise a degree of dominion over institutions that confessionally serve another Lord. Assessment, through the federal financial aid system, has become the means by which secularists have been able to blur the antithesis between Christian and non-Christian institutions and to impose standards for both on non-Christian assumptions. In accepting government money, Christian colleges confront a watershed moment: where our treasure is, there our hearts will be also.

Unfortunately, the history of American Christian higher education is not encouraging when the antithesis has been blurred in situations like this. Many American colleges that began as faithful, Bible-believing institutions have now been apostate longer than they were faithful. This sad history ought to make us more vigilant and less complacent about the so-called “minor” matters or “small” issues we face daily at our colleges and TRACS that clearly have worldview implications, such as government funding and assessment. These are the issues where, as academic brothers and sisters in Christ growing together in sanctification, we should be prodding one another to greater faithfulness before our Triune God at our respective institutions. We must challenge one another to think more carefully and self-consciously biblically about institutional accountability and to ask hard questions that will allow us together to consider how we might more faithfully fulfill our responsibilities as Christian educators and administrators. For example:

1.       What are the Christian worldview implications of outcomes assessment as commonly understood and practiced? Does it matter?

2.       Are our philosophies of education shaped more by the practical and specific requirements for institutional assessment established by government authorities than by the Christian principles implicit in our own biblical foundations statements? Does it matter?

3.       Should assessment at a Christian college look any different from assessment at a secular institution? Does it matter?

4.       Do our institutional effectiveness and assessment plans and processes depend more on the latest secular educational theories or business management strategies than on our Christian worldview and Trinitarian assumptions? Does it matter?

5.       Do the governmental and accrediting requirements of assessment encourage or discourage truly biblical accountability and Christian faithfulness at the deepest levels of our institutions? Is our assessment plan consistent with our foundational Trinitarian beliefs? Does it matter?

C. Worldviews in Conflict over Assessment

These questions touch our fundamental worldview assumptions and pose some of the most significant academic and educational issues Christian educators can face today. A closer look—through the lense of a Christian worldview—at Modernism and Postmodernism’s ontological, epistemological, axiological, rhetorical, methodological, and teleological assumptions driving institutional assessment at the national level reveals why assessment is such an important watershed issue (a chart, Education & Assessment Worldview Assumptions, at the end of this paper compares these conflicting worldviews graphically).

1.  Assessment and Ontology: The Nature of Education (Ontological Questions)

Assessment is supposed to be a method of determining and demonstrating quality education and quality educational institutions. As Barbara Boothe states in her Institutional Effectiveness Manual (TRACS, 2002), “One of the greatest challenges facing higher education today is the ability to demonstrate the quality of education provided to students . . .  [and] in recent years, assessment of all areas of the institution, curricular and co-curricular, has become the means for determining quality and is used as a basis for improvement” (pp. 3, 20, emphasis added). But do different worldviews make our ontological assumptions about education (and what constitutes quality education in particular) problematic? Does the Christian worldview share ontological assumptions with Modernism or Postmodernism about the nature of education? Is there enough common worldview ground on the fundamental nature of education to assess its quality? Can the same standards for defining and determining quality be applied consistently and “fairly” between those who hold fundamentally different worldviews? Will the different ontological assumptions allow for a common approach to assessment, or will one worldview ultimately, antithetically exclude or dominate the others?

As Trinitarians, we affirm that education, as part of God’s creation, is under His sovereign authority alone and reflects His triune character, resolving the one-many and objective-subjective dichotomies. We live in a material and spiritual universe upheld and sustained by Christ alone (Acts 17:28). Education is the enculturation and nurturing of a way of life, either in the paideia of God (Eph. 6:4) or in some rebellious form of idolatry. We believe that education and the evaluation of our educational institution must, therefore, both follow biblical principles and self-consciously reflect God’s triune character by being personal, creative, and loving.

As Trinitarians, we deny that education is merely the transmission of objective, autonomous facts from one mind to another. We deny that education, if understood biblically as a nurturing and enculturative process, can be autonomously measured, verified, or falsified objectively or scientifically independent of the Triune God. We further deny that education is merely culturally relative or a subjective experience. We deny that we live in a materialistic, fragmentary universe, where education is reduced to a process of socially constructing person-variable “realities.” Education and the evaluation of educational institutions cannot be meaningful, valid, or reliable if approached from either Modernist or Postmodernist worldview assumptions and their objectivist or subjectivist (relativist) perspectives.

2. Assessment and Epistemology: Knowing Christianly (Epistemological Questions)

The Scriptures teach that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” Non-Christian worldviews typically appeal to very different (materialistic or relativistic) foundations for human knowledge or reject foundationalism altogether. Do these different worldviews make such epistemological assumptions behind education and assessment problematic? Can a Christian worldview share epistemological assumptions with Modernism or Postmodernism about education and assessment? Is there enough common ground between these worldviews on the fundamental nature of knowledge to assess its quality in education in common terms? Can the same standards for defining and determining what it means to know something be applied consistently and “fairly” across institutions guided by fundamentally different worldviews? Will the different epistemological assumptions allow for a common approach to assessment, or will one worldview ultimately, antithetically exclude or dominate the others?

As Trinitarians, we affirm that knowledge is multiperspectival (sensory, emotional, moral, aesthetic, etc.) involving the whole person made in the image of our Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Knowledge entails an integrated sensibility toward the Creator and the significance of truth, beauty and goodness in His created order. True knowledge cannot be acquired apart from the revelation of God and the work of Christ through the illumination of the Holy Spirit. We confess with the church of all ages that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” As Trinitarians we affirm that all creaturely knowledge is personal, finite, partial, analogical, and sinful (since the fall), yet nevertheless can be valid and reliable when guided by the Spirit through faith, and shaped by the poetry, story, and mystery of God in Christ and His Word (Col. 2:3; Heb. 4:13). As Trinitarians we also assume that knowledge, biblically understood, is never merely propositional or limited to intellectual or rational functions, but is best understood as an aesthetic and moral (poetic) experience of the wonder and goodness of the living Truth.

As Trinitarians, we deny that knowledge consists of the possession of brute facts. There are no autonomous “brute facts” independent of God. We deny Modernism’s claim that autonomous science and the scientific method are the only valid and reliable means for determining truth. We deny the primacy or validity of rationalism and empiricism as comprehensive epistemological theories. We reject as false and unbiblical the Modernist claim that only what is measurable can be reliable or meaningful. We also deny the Postmodern claim that knowledge is a subjective experience of the social construction of reality, determined by environmental and biological factors. We deny Postmodernism’s claim that “reality” is person-variable or context-bound and ultimately relativistic. We deny, on the authority of God’s Word, that the world contains multiple contradictory or dialectically opposed “truths” and “values” of equal merit and worth.

3. Assessment and Values: The Problem of True Accountability (Axiological Questions)

The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are, according to the Westminster Larger Catechism (1643; Q/A #3), “the only rule of faith and obedience.” The Christian faith is a way of life, defined by its Lord and His Word. The Christian faith is circumscribed by important biblical values such as life, faith, repentance, obedience, love, submission, sacrifice, joy, thankfulness, good works, perseverance, and so on. Modernists and Postmodernists not only refuse to acknowledge the Word of God as the foundation for their values or ethics, but even condemn our most cherished Trinitarian values (truth, beauty, goodness, mutual submission, for example) as positively repulsive. So do different worldviews make these axiological elements inherent in education problematic? Does the Christian worldview share axiological assumptions with Modernism or Postmodernism about the nature of knowledge and education? Is there enough common ground on the fundamental nature of values to meaningfully assess educational quality without conflict or contradiction? Can the same standards for defining and determining values be applied consistently and “fairly” between those who hold fundamentally different value systems and worldviews? Will the different axiological assumptions allow for a common approach to assessment, or will one worldview ultimately, antithetically exclude or dominate the others?

As Trinitarians, we affirm that education is an inextricably religious process of passing one’s faith, knowledge, and worldview to the next generation, perpetuating the values and way of life that faith entails. Education is thus inescapably “value-laden,” not in the sense that it merely contains certain values, but that it is the intergenerational incarnation of our religion and its values. Education is an act of worship, a work of faith expressed in what and how we teach our children regarding truth, beauty, and goodness. We affirm that the Scripture entrusts parents, not the state or the instituted church, with the primary responsibility for educating their children. We affirm that the religious nature of education is always subject to the biblical antithesis between belief and unbelief, faith and faithlessness, obedience and disobedience. Education is never religiously neutral. It is either done in obedience to God and His Word, or it is done in the name of some idol at war with Christ and His kingdom. Education cannot serve two masters. We confess with the church of all ages that the Bible is our only ultimate rule for faith and practice in the education of our children. The values of our biblical foundation and Christian worldview apply to both education and the process of evaluating institutional effectiveness.

As Trinitarians, we deny that education is value-free, religiously neutral, or unbiased. We deny that the Modernist faith in the supremacy of science, the scientific method, objectivity, and quantification as false, reductionistic, ugly, and idolatrous. While we acknowledge that God graciously allows unbelievers to discover truths about His creation, we deny that science is a neutral judge of truth or possesses any power or authority independent of or greater than the Creator and Lord of science. We reject Modernism’s messianic view of education as high-handed rebellion against our God’s Messiah. We further deny Postmodernism’s claim that education is so value-laden and biased as to be hopelessly subjective. We deny the view that there are multiple realities of equal validity constructed socially, and reject the epistemological and axiological relativism this view entails. We condemn Postmodernism’s aggressive hawking of multiculturalism and ethical relativism, where all beliefs and values must be considered equally valid, as forms of polytheism at war with the exclusivity of the Christian faith, destructive of civil society and justice, and corrosive to true education.

4.  Assessment and Rhetoric: The Language of Accountability (Rhetorical Questions)

How we express ourselves shapes the content of our expression and reveals our hearts. The language of bureaucracy, for example, is often ugly because the bureaucratic heart is hard and inflexible, loving its “system” more than the people who labor within and around it. Similarly, by seeking the legitimacy and prestige of the “hard” sciences and better living through chemistry, the social sciences have generally adopted the cold, impersonal, technical, objectivist language of mathematics, statistics, and the natural sciences. Educational administrators have followed suit, leaning on similar technical jargon and bureaucratese where ordinary language, even poetry and well-crafted prose would have been more aesthetically pleasing and communicative. Do worldview differences make the rhetoric used in education and the assessment processes problematic? Does the Christian worldview share rhetorical assumptions with Modernism or Postmodernism about the language of education and assessment? Is there enough common worldview ground on the fundamental nature of rhetoric to apply it to educational assessment (or will we talk past each other)? Can the same standards for defining and expressing quality rhetorically be applied consistently and “fairly” between those who hold fundamentally different worldviews? Will our different rhetorical assumptions allow for a common approach to assessment, or will one worldview ultimately, antithetically exclude or dominate the others rhetorically?

As Trinitarians, we affirm that the most effective and God-honoring rhetoric for education and assessment will be personal and covenantal, reflecting the true, beautiful, and good God-to-man and man-to-man relationships found in faithful teaching and learning. We affirm that poetic and narrative language best reflects a biblical and Trinitarian voice for education and the evaluation of its effectiveness. We affirm that our teaching, our institution, and the way we evaluate them should embody the truth, beauty, and goodness of the Trinitarian character of God, and speak with Christ-like eloquence, beauty, and authority in our prophetic, priestly, and kingly voices. We assume the most effective rhetoric for education and assessment will find its truth, beauty, and goodness in “Thus saith the Lord,” with all humility. We believe that Christian education and assessment should be self-consciously Trinitarian in their rhetoric: personal, creative, and loving. And we affirm the normativity and validity of poetry, parables, metaphors, narratives, and songs, as biblically sanctioned modes of expressing truth, beauty, and goodness—appropriate even in annual reports and institutional assessments.

As Trinitarians, we deny the Modernist trust in impersonal, formulaic, bureaucratic, and mechanistic language for education and assessment. It is neither rhetorically effective nor biblically faithful. In fact, it is ugly. We deny that appeals to “measurable data,” quantitative rhetoric, or stilted social scientific language (enshrined in the passive voice), dominant among secular (Modernist) educators and bureaucrats, best identifies or expresses the truth about Christian education and assessment. We hold that such rhetoric, in fact, evades truth and personal accountability. We deny that a formal, technical, or impersonal voice best captures the beauty of Christian education or serves as a model for how we should present our institutional self-evaluations. We hold that such rhetoric, in fact, hates beauty and the way God speaks in creation, His Son, and His Word. We deny that bureaucratic language or objectivistic rhetoric can adequately express what is good or ethical in Christian education or assessment. We hold that such rhetoric, in fact, denies basic biblical values of right and wrong, good and bad, and those who use it evade personal responsibility. We reject all rhetoric that bases its truth, beauty, or goodness on “Thus saith science.” We further deny Postmodernism’s rhetoric of first-person voices, antinomian language, and subjective introspection.  We reject the individualistic and relativistic rhetoric of Postmodernism as little more than “Thus saith me.”

5. Assessment and Method: The Poetics of Education (Methodological Questions)

In keeping with one of the chief assessment demands for measurable outcomes, the TRACS standard for institutional effectiveness states, “The underlying basis of a process for demonstrating institutional effectiveness is to provide hard data to demonstrate that the institution is accomplishing its mission” (emphasis added). This suggests that validity is resident primarily in quantitative methods of assessment, and downplays or ignores other methods of inquiry and discovery that are not quantitatively or “scientifically” based, yet just as valid and reliable.[1] In fact, the Triune God, who is the very definition of truth, validity, and reliability, inspires poetry and song, composes history and prophecy, makes slimy slugs and splashes glorious sunsets and rainbows across the horizon. Jesus spoke in parables and metaphors, not in refereed journal articles or with scientific formulae. The Triune God apparently delights more in the beauty, poetry, and song of “soft data” than in the sterile, lifeless versions of truth found in most “hard data.” In fact, the Apostle Paul argues that an ordinary, cursory glance at creation reveals the glory of God sufficiently to condemn unthankful sinners to everlasting damnation (Romans 1). In other words, God’s own methods of revelation, truth-telling and accountability are not primarily or even generally found in the quantitative methods of modern science, statistics, or “hard data.” So do worldview differences make such methodological differences regarding educational assessment problematic? Does the Christian worldview share methodological assumptions with Modernism or Postmodernism about the nature of assessment validity and reliability? Is there enough common worldview ground on the fundamental nature of methods of inquiry (discovery, integration, application) to apply it to educational assessment? Can the same methods for defining and determining quality be applied consistently and “meaningfully” between those who hold such fundamentally different worldviews? Will the different methodological assumptions allow for a common approach to assessment, or will one worldview ultimately, antithetically exclude or dominate the others?

As Trinitarians, we affirm that the most appropriate methods for Christian education and assessment will reflect the triune character of God, in their unity and diversity, and their integration of truth, beauty, and goodness. The most faithful methods will be those that preserve the wholeness of His creatures, framed in the context of their living, personal relationships, and not reduced to isolated or fragmented abstractions. We affirm the importance of poetic knowledge, seeing life as whole persons, body, soul, and mind, and education as an act of love where Christian parents pass on the Way of life to their children in obedience to God’s Word.

As Trinitarians, we reject the Modern idols of analysis and methodologism, but not the importance of scholarly rigor and diligence. We deny the supremacy of objectivist and quantitative methodologies. While they can have their place in limited circumstances, we deny the appropriateness and adequacy of quantitative social science methodologies for describing or explaining the distinctively covenantal and spiritual character of Christian education. We deny that the deductive process, no matter how rigorous, systematic, scientific, or analytical, can yield truth, exhibit beauty, or demonstrate goodness, if approached autonomously. We also reject Postmodernism’s idols of subjectivism and relativism, but not the importance of personal integrity and relational fidelity in the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. We deny the inductive process can yield knowledge or understanding, no matter how much personal experience, contextualization, or familiarity one has with a subject, if approached autonomously. We also reject Postmodernism’s claim that no single method or combination of methods can yield “truth” or “facts.”

6.  Assessment and the Goals of Education (Teleological Questions)

“What is the chief end of man?” The answer to this first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism (1643) expresses the biblical purpose for human existence in simple terms: “to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.” The Scriptures are full of commands and encouragements to teach our children (and their children) the ways and glories of the Lord (Deut. 4) and to bring them up in the paideia and admonition of the Lord (Eph. 6:4) “till we all come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13). So do different worldviews make teleological differences regarding education and educational assessment problematic? Does the Christian worldview share assumptions with Modernism or Postmodernism about the ultimate or penultimate goals of education and assessment? Is there enough common worldview ground regarding our greatest hopes and goals for education to make common educational assessment goals meaningful? Can the same standards for defining and determining quality be applied consistently and “fairly” between those who hold fundamentally different worldviews? Will the different teleological assumptions allow for a common approach to assessment, or will not one worldview ultimately, antithetically exclude the others?

As Trinitarians, we affirm that the goal of Christian education is to raise up future generations of faithful, obedient, joyful, submissive servants of Christ, equipped to serve the Triune God with body-soul-mind in all things, as Scripture requires. Education is a joyful Christian duty, whose goal entails the development and use of a student’s God-given gifts to declare Christ’s lordship faithfully over all of life and to advance and nurture the growth of vibrant Trinitarian culture. We believe that a thoroughly Christian education and assessment plan must faithfully reflect the truth, beauty, and goodness of our triune God in holistic fashion, and not advance the goals of the idols of our age.

As Trinitarians, we reject Modernism’s educational goal of achieving value-free, objective knowledge through secular science, with its pursuit of prediction and control over all ends and means independent of God and His Word. We also reject the Modernist paradigm of educational assessment, dominant in higher education assessment circles, with its goal of producing accurate, measurable, reliable—but religiously autonomous—information as promoting the Modernist educational philosophy and agenda, and denying biblical accountability. We also deny Postmodernism’s philosophical rejection of accountability as intellectual and academic folly, and destructive of true education.

D. Conclusion

A Christian worldview approach to assessment should be antithetically distinct from assessment made in the image of Modernist or Postmodernist assumptions. Assessment is not a religiously neutral exercise. It reveals what we believe most deeply about education and the standards that should govern its evaluation. It is therefore a watershed issue for our Christian colleges and universities that seek to be and to stay faithful in an age of faithless secularism.

If we consider the implications of our biblical standards and Christian worldview assumptions regarding the ontology, epistemology, axiology, rhetoric, method, and teleology of education and assessment, we should find that our approach to education and assessment differs significantly, if not radically, from those who come to them with anti-Christian assumptions. As Christians, we might articulate these things differently at our various institutions, but we should express the antithesis on these fundamental matters in a way that distinguishes our Christian vision of education and assessment from non-Christian ones.

Articulating our assumptions, positively and negatively, on these basic matters, helps us see why a distinctively Christian approach to assessment is necessary. While we might quibble over some of the details, and make ongoing refinements in these matters as we sharpen one another with our institutional distinctives, professional wisdom, and biblical insights, we should find our assessment efforts look quite different from the world’s. Our Christian worldview assumptions should shape our approach to assessment. And that approach should look increasingly Trinitarian.

Our approach to assessment will demonstrate which side of the antithesis between belief and unbelief our institutions will likely stand in a few years from now. If we are consist with our biblical foundations statements on this point, then we will acknowledge that the Trinity provides the ultimate model for understanding and evaluating the individual roles and responsibilities of all persons and creaturely institutions, and for understanding and evaluating how they relate (or should relate) to one another in unity. The challenge, of course, is articulating what a self-consciously Trinitarian approach to assessment might look like in practice. That is the goal of the second part.

For more on our self-consciously Trinitarian approach to evaluating institutional effectiveness, see our two related documents:

NSA Assessment Documents

1. Plan for Evaluating Institutional Effectiveness

2. Trinity & Institutional Effectiveness, Part I: Assessment as a Watershed Worldview Issue (above)