Balancing Equity in General Chemistry Laboratory Courses: The Complex Impact of Specifications Grading on Student Success and Opportunity Gaps

Specifications grading has been proposed as an alternative grading method to better promote student success over traditional grading schemes. Within the chemistry community, specifications grading has been growing in popularity over the past decade as demonstrated by the rise of publications and conference talks. While several studies describe shifts in the final grade distribution as a result of the implementation of specifications grading, no study explores the differential impact on students of different social identities. In this study, we analyze over 9700 final course grades of a year-long general chemistry laboratory course under both traditional and specifications grading schemes. Data are analyzed by individual student's social identities (i.e., gender, generation status, underrepresented minority status, and transfer student status) and students' intersectional identities. Our results are mixed and conflicting. More systemically minoritized students pass these courses with high grades under specifications grading, but opportunity gaps between systemically minoritized students and their systemically advantaged counterparts remain. The results of this implementation show that the impact of specifications grading on students is complex and that much still needs to be understood about students' experiences with different grading schemes and their impact.