Illinois communities are working collaboratively with each other, and with families, to ensure every child arrives at Kindergarten fully ready to thrive.
Our communities are using The Basics
The Basics are a set of five, easy, evidence-based practices to optimize the development of young children birth to age five.
Our Ultimate Goal
Each Basics Illinois community is working to measurably improve Kindergarten readiness and ensure that all families, particularly those farthest from opportunity, may easily access evidence-based parenting supports.
The Basics Illinois Network
Is a group of four Illinois communities – and growing – that share creative, local strategies for how best to saturate their respective communities with The 5 Basics using common messaging, tools, strategies and resources.
Led by the DeKalb County Regional Office of Education, the Network also includes Rockford, DuPage and more—and welcomes any other Illinois community interested in learning more or implementing the Basics themselves.
Basics Illinois is an affiliate of The Basics, Inc.
The Basics, Inc. grew out of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard University led by Dr. Ron Ferguson.
Founder Dr. Ron Ferguson was the faculty director of the Achievement Gap Initiative (AGI) at Harvard University, when he first noticed in the national Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (Birth Cohort) that cognitive skill gaps between children of different racial, ethnic, and parental-education groups were very apparent by twenty-four months. He began exploring how to contribute to the large body of work that was already underway to support early learning and brain development, but he wanted to scale across whole communities to reach every child, starting at birth.
The AGI convened a national conference and science advisory committee to formulate five tenets of caregiving practice, now called The Basics Principles, around which to organize The Basics movement. The aim was socioecological saturation, meaning to infuse multiple settings in communities with information, social reinforcements, and regular reminders regarding the benefits of using The Basics Principles routinely in early childhood parenting/caregiving.
The AGI and The Black Philanthropy Fund (an organization of African Americans in Boston) formally launched The Basics movement in Boston in September of 2016 to help prepare children from all backgrounds and across whole neighborhoods to thrive, starting at birth.
The word spread quickly. By December, teams from 11 cities convened in Boston to learn about The Principles, the tools, and the approach. Rather than wait years for Boston to refine the approach, attendees agreed, “We’ll figure it out together.” The Basics Learning Network (BLN) was thereby born. It operates under the leadership of The Basics, Inc., a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization under the fiscal sponsorship of Third Sector New England (TSNE)
Today, coalitions across dozens of BLN cities, towns, and counties in the US, Brazil, and Australia are engaging their communities, participating in BLN research, and regularly convening to learn, innovate, and share best practices.
