Research
Baltimore's Promise and our partners conduct independent research to inform our work along the cradle-to-career continuum. Through our commissioned research, we aim to educate ourselves and the community on areas of opportunity to focus our efforts- including challenges that Baltimore is facing as well as local and national bright spots or evidenced-based practices that are producing results.
2023: Baltimore City Youth Opportunities Landscape
The Baltimore City Youth Opportunities Landscape is a public and collaborative effort, facilitated by Baltimore’s Promise to centralize, aggregate, map, and analyze the youth opportunities available to young people ages 0-24.This type of landscape and analysis can help us understand the universe of programs and services that exist in Baltimore City. The Opportunities Landscape will help community members understand disparities in access to youth opportunities by race, gender, age, neighborhood, and other factors.
Click here to visit the Opportunities Landscape Landing page, which includes a full report, infographic, dashboard, and stakeholder-specific resources for program providers and youth, parents, and caregivers.
2023: Baltimore City fund mapping
Fund mapping is a process of gathering information on investments from multiple public and private funders to help leaders better understand where money is coming from, where it’s going, and how it aligns with community needs. Baltimore’s Promise is the local lead on this fund map project, in partnership with Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Maryland Philanthropy Network, and with support from Mainspring Consulting to collect and analyze data. The fund mapping data reflects fiscal year 2022 as it relates to supports and services for young people ages 14-24 in Baltimore City. Click here to visit the fund mapping webpage.
Post-Secondary Pathways in Baltimore City
The Baltimore’s Promise Career Readiness Work Group, a city-wide collaborative consisting of practitioners, researchers, stakeholders, and philanthropy, developed a research plan to learn more about how we might improve the career and educational opportunities of youth in Baltimore. As part of that effort, Baltimore’s Promise collaborated with the Baltimore Education Research Consortium, the Institute for Education Policy, Baltimore City Public Schools, and the Maryland Longitudinal Data System to learn more about outcomes for graduates of Baltimore City Public Schools.
Looking at the 2009 graduating cohort in the fall after graduation and again six years after graduation, analysis reveals that only 12% of high school graduates earn degrees, and college degree completion is significantly lower among African American graduates of City Schools. More than one in four graduates are opportunity youth, meaning that they neither enrolled in higher education nor entered the formal workforce. Finally, a large proportion of graduates from the class of 2009 were not earning family supporting wages six-years after graduation, and there were gaps in earnings along the lines of race and gender. This report is the first step in identifying opportunities for collective action in Baltimore to improve the post-secondary trajectory of Baltimore City’s youth.
Download the full brief and explore research from our collaborators at the Post-Secondary Pathways landing page.
Cradle-to-Career Investments in Baltimore City
Baltimore is a city of significant assets. Baltimore’s cradle-to-career continuum received public and private investments totaling $3.53 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2015, a 0.3% decrease compared to $3.54 billion in FY 2013. These investments support a range of programs and services for Baltimore’s youth, including early childhood programming, education and special education, health care, employment services, and crime prevention. For an in-depth look at these investments by funding source, outcome area, and more, please download the report below. This report was produced by David McNear for Baltimore's Promise in September 2016 and builds off our formative research, described below.
2015 Cradle-to-Career Investments in Baltimore City
Exploring Kindergarten Readiness in Baltimore City
Baltimore's promise has a goal that all children are ready to succeed in school by the time they enter kindergarten. This means that all children will be able to demonstrate the foundational knowledge, skills, and behaviors that allow them to fully participate and succeed in school. To further our work to improve outcomes in this area, we commissioned a report that explores early care and education, including its challenges and benefits, as well as potential levers for change. Prepared by the The University of Maryland School of Social Work's Institute for Innovation & Implementation, you can download the January 2017 report below.
A Roadmap to Creating Opportunities for Opportunity Youth in Baltimore
More than one in five young people ages 16 to 24 in Baltimore are neither in school nor working. As a community, we must find new ways to reconnect these young people to education, training, jobs and entrepreneurship opportunities. Strengthening Baltimore's Workforce, a report recently published by the Baltimore Workforce Collaborative, highlights several initiatives that utilize the industry-sector workforce development approach with notable outcomes, and how they can be expanded. Additionally, working with other organizations in Baltimore, we commissioned two expert reports that make recommendations for responding to this challenge, focusing on expanding industry-specific training programs, fostering more collaboration between organizations and providing expanded supports for youth to help them succeed.
Read a summary of recommendations from the two reports. A Call to Action- Creating New Opportunities for Baltimore City's Disconnected Youth
Download the full reports:
Connecting Baltimore's Opportunity Youth to Careers prepared by Field Guide Consulting for the Job Opportunities Task Force and Baltimore’s Promise
Expanding Sector Employment Opportunities for Young Adults in Baltimore prepared by Kingslow Associates for the Baltimore Workforce Funders Collaborative
The research reports were developed collaboratively by Baltimore’s Promise, the Baltimore Workforce Funders Collaborative and the Job Opportunities Task Force. Additional funding support was provided by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Baltimore Metropolitan Council , the National Fund for Workforce Solutions and the Corporation for National and Community Service.
Formative Research
At the request of Baltimore’s Promise and with the support of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, The Institute for Innovation & Implementation at the University of Maryland, Baltimore School of Social Work, in collaboration with David McNear, conducted a best practices and financing review around the outcome areas in August 2014. This review built upon those conducted over the past decade in Baltimore and addressed indicators, best practices, and activity in Baltimore City, as well as the funding for programs and interventions for each of the identified outcome areas.
Collective Impact
The launch and early success of multi-sector collaborations in the 2000s created a swell of interest in new approaches for addressing complex social issues. Communities interested in replicating collective impact models today can learn from abundant written guidance and instruction on building a strong collaborative. This report, prepared by the Annie E. Casey Foundation for Baltimore's Promise in August 2014, provides advice to civic collaborations during the early stages as they go through planning, start-up, and taking plans to action.
Laying the Groundwork for Collective Impact: Early-Stage Advice for Multi-Sector-Collaborations