MDRC’s Guilford Readiness of Children for School (ROCS) study is an evaluation of the Ready for School, Ready for Life initiative in Guilford County, North Carolina. The initiative aims to support interconnected programs and services for young children and their families with the goal of having children enter kindergarten ready for learning.

The multiyear, multimethod Guilford ROCS study has two parts. An implementation substudy describes the rollout of the initiative and its components through interviews, surveys, focus groups, and program data. An outcomes-monitoring substudy uses administrative and survey data to track the well-being of families and children from the prenatal period through third grade, and to record trends in their well-being over time.

This brief provides an update on the rollout and implementation of the initiative in 2024 and describes trends in child and family well-being over the past decade in Guilford County. These trends provide information on what child well-being looked like in the county before the initiative began and in its early rollout. As the initiative continues, MDRC will report on how these trends are changing over time.