Beginning with the 2020/21 school year, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) began collecting literacy screening assessment data from schools and districts participating in certain state grants. Screening assessment benchmark scores were available for just over 35,000 unique students across 2020/21 and 2021/22, representing about 10 percent of the state's population of grade K--3 students and including students from 43 districts and 159 schools. The screening assessments in use in the state vary in how they were designed, how they are administered, and how they define risk of reading difficulty. Most, but not all, screening assessments also include several levels of risk. These differences, along with the fact that students take these assessments several times per year, mean that multiple methods are used to calculate numbers of students at risk of reading difficulty across assessments in the state and that the meaning of "risk" can differ somewhat across assessments. The screening assessment data include more economically disadvantaged and English learner students and fewer grade 3 students than the state as a whole, suggesting some caution may be needed in generalizing from results of these analyses to the state. Nonetheless, these literacy screening assessment data provide an initial opportunity to examine student performance in the early grades and assess the extent to which intended policy outcomes in literacy are being achieved. This report provides a first look at the literacy performance of students in grades K-3 in Massachusetts based on available data from both the 2020/21 and 2021/22 school years.