Yes, this is the scenario:
- Activity is created
- Activity's grade item is then hidden (to embargo the marks)
- Activity is completed by students
- Activity is graded by staff
- <time passes>
- Activity's grade item is set to visible to release the marks (or equally the grade item's hidden until time expires)
This set up (1 & 2) is not retained upon course reset, which is understandable as there is no way to set the "reset" state of items.
This then leads to staff "forgetting" to reset the grade book item state.
Marking workflow is OK, but not always necessary as the staff aren't looking for individual's marks to be released but just to toggle the visibility of everyone's mark. However it's just in the Assignment module, this set up works consistently across different modules that have marks (or at least should if they've implemented things properly )