By Lieny Jeon, Nathaniel Dewey, Ziangyu Zhao, Briana Bostic and Marc L. Stein

This report provides an overview of kindergarten readiness of six Baltimore City Public Schools (City Schools) kindergarten cohorts from the 2016-2017 to the 2021–22 school year. This report is accompanied by the Digest of City Schools Kindergarten Statistics, 2023 Edition (Baltimore Education Research Consortium [BERC], 2023), which provides detailed summary tables and descriptive statistics on kindergarten readiness and outcomes over time and is the source data for the visualization and interpretation found in this report.

By understanding children’s kindergarten experiences, we hope that the stakeholders can collectively identify needs and opportunities for early childhood services and programming for our youngest children and their families.

This report is part of a series of annual BERC reports and the second report on Kindergarten Statistics. The purpose of these reports will be to provide understanding of students’ educational experiences in City Schools. 

Not only does this report provide an overview of child school readiness outcomes (i.e., language & literacy, social foundations, mathematics, physical well-being & motor development), this report shows trends in readiness across all outcomes over time. Furthermore, this report breaks down trends across student demographic background, including gender, race/ethnicity, English language learning, and care setting prior to kindergarten entry.

This work was led by BERC researchers, and members of the Baltimore City Early Childhood Data Collaborative contributed to the development of this report.