The majority of publications report a shift in the final letter grade distribution toward more A and B grades after adopting specifications grading. In general, it would be expected that as the final letter grade distribution shifts toward more A and B grades, the quality of student work would show substantial improvement. However, this potential correlation has not been studied systematically. Most reported comparisons of the quality of student work between points-based and specifications grading systems are anecdotal. This lack of detailed comparisons of student work is unsurprising due to the drastic changes that are made to a course when converting from a points-based grading system to a specifications grading system. Assignments are typically modified to better align with the LOs. The removal of partial credit makes conducting a rigorous comparison of student work particularly challenging because the scales are not the same between the two grading systems (e.g. an assignment task may be graded out of five in a points-based grading system versus being graded using the binary pass/no pass rating in a specifications grading system).