Less than half of students who started elementary school last year in Montgomery and Prince George’s County were ready for kindergarten, according to a new report from the Maryland State Department of Education. In both counties and across Maryland overall, kindergarten readiness declined from the last time it was measured two years ago.

The Kindergarten Readiness Assessment (KRA) is carried out at the start of the school year by teachers, who evaluate their students in four categories: mathematics, social foundations, physical well-being and motor development. Statewide, 45 percent of girls were ready compared to 35 percent of boys.

In Prince George’s County, 28 percent of 9,676 kindergarteners were deemed ready, compared to 46 percent of 10,577 kindergarteners in Montgomery County. Statewide, 40 percent of students entered school fully ready. That marks a drop of 7 percent among all three from fall of 2019.

“Unfortunately, [this] is not unexpected given the disruption in these last two years with the pandemic, especially the disruption in childcare settings,” Montgomery County Councilmember Nancy Navarro told WAMU/DCist.  “Obviously, it’s something that I’m very concerned about.” Navarro serves on the council’s Education and Culture committee.

A quarter fewer kids in Maryland attended pre-kindergarten last school year, and for those who did, education was mostly virtual. Many more kindergarteners in both Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties started the school year having only previously had at-home or informal care. The report also reveals that kindergarteners with disabilities, kindergarteners of color, and kindergarteners from low-income households were even further behind.

In Montgomery County, 69 percent of white kindergarteners were deemed ready for kindergarten, compared to 22 percent of Hispanic students and 44 percent of Black students. The achievement gap was slightly less stark in Prince George’s County, where 38 percent of white kindergarteners were ready, compared to 11 percent of Hispanic students and 39 percent of Black students.

“The issue of the academic achievement gap – that is where it begins, and then it exacerbates as it goes through the K-12 system.”  Councilmember Navarro said.  “That, to me, is why it’s so critical that we invest in the first five years of a child’s life in terms of being able to offer high quality, accessible and affordable childcare for all.”

In 2019, Navarro spearheaded an initiative in Montgomery County aimed at expanding access to pre-kindergarten programs and childcare for lower income families, focusing specifically on areas of the county with the most need. Those places include Gaithersburg, Montgomery Village, Glenmont-Wheaton, Burtonsville, White Oak and Silver Spring.

Navarro said $30 million dollars has been invested in the effort thus far. The money went towards training for people who wanted to become childcare providers as well as subsidizing spots in programs.

According to the KRA, kids with disabilities were also at a disadvantage. Only one in ten children with disabilities in Prince George’s County was ready for kindergarten this year, and less than one in twenty in Montgomery County were.

“Simply returning to normal will not be good enough to recover and accelerate student learning coming out of the pandemic,” Maryland State Superintendent Mohammed Choudhury said in a statement. “The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future provides us with this once-in-a-generation moment and demands that we rebuild our foundation for early learning and expand access to high-quality prekindergarten for every three and four-year-old child in the state.”

In 2020, lawmakers passed the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, which increased yearly funding of education in the state by $3.8 billion. Expanding access to early childhood education was a major goal of the legislation, which allocated money towards opening more centers for kids to receive affordable prekindergarten education and established a sliding scale to determine how much families could afford to pay.

Last year in Prince George’s County, money from the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future supported a 4-week educational summer program for 600 incoming kindergarteners called Rising Stars. The county also plans to open more centers for prekindergarten learning in coming years.