Silver Lining or Missed Opportunity? A Mixed Methods Study of COVID-19 School Closures and Grading Reform Efforts in K-12 Schools

The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent school closures led to unprecedented disruptions of K-12 education in the United States, but the impact on teacher grading practices was varied and nuanced. Grading doubtlessly changed during the pandemic, but the extent to which these emergency grading policies would change traditional practices was unknown. This mixed-methods study sought to understand how these pandemic school closures impacted subsequent grading reform efforts in K-12 schools. Using a convergent parallel mixed methods design, researchers collected quantitative data from a sample of 95 principal participants from 6 regions around the U.S. using a 16-item survey, while qualitative data were collected from 7 principal participants from around the country via semi-structured interviews. Descriptive statistics and a Wilcoxon signed-rank test were used to analyze quantitative data, and an interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) approach was used for qualitative data analysis. Quantitative and qualitative data strands were mixed during interpretation, producing three final dimensions that explain the central phenomenon: the importance of principal grading reform vision, the ephemeral nature of post-COVID-19 grading reforms, and the significance of flexible grading practices both during school closures and today.