Kindergarten Success Fact Book (2023)

Kindergarten Success Fact Book: Baltimore City Schools Kindergarten Classes of 2016-17 to 2021-22

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. 

 

Highlights

The proportion of children demonstrating kindergarten readiness in City Schools has fallen from 37-41% (2019-2020) to 23% (2021-2022) after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Students in City Schools demonstrated greater chronic absenteeism in the 2021-2022 school year compared to the 2020-2021 school year.

Students in City Schools improved early literacy skills throughout the 2021-2022 school year as they returned to school after the pandemic.

English language learners demonstrated remarkable growth in readiness at the end of the kindergarten year compared to the beginning of the year.

Demonstration of kindergarten readiness was associated with better third grade PARCC scores.