Kindergarten Success Fact Book (2022)
Kindergarten Success Fact Book: Baltimore City Schools Kindergarten Classes of 2014-15 to 2019-20
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 2014–15 to the 2019–20 school year. This report is accompanied by the Digest of City Schools Kindergarten Statistics, 2022 Edition (Baltimore Education Research Consortium [BERC], 2022), 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 planned series of annual BERC reports. 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 entering City Schools demonstrating kindergarten readiness (40-50%) has remained essentially unchanged over the last five years.
Nearly one-third of children were chronically absent, missing at least 10% of total days of school, across all years examined. Generally, children who were more successful in kindergarten had better attendance
Children who participated in formal care before entering kindergarten demonstrated better readiness overall compared to those who had informal or no early care education.
Demonstration of kindergarten readiness was related to outcomes on 3rd grade PARCC literacy and mathematics assessments.