Each year, Illinois Times publishes an article on the status of Springfield District 186 Schools. Across the district, teachers, staff and administrators give their all, pouring their heart and soul into our students’ futures. Many of our students make gains, but not the dramatic grade-level jumps necessary for major changes to the Illinois Report Card.
The unfortunate truth is that many schools across the district, state and nation are at an incredible disadvantage when it comes to raising scores. The most crucial window of learning for a child – ages zero to three – occurred before they ever walked in our doors. Many children begin their academic career playing catch-up. According to Zero to Three, a policy advocacy organization focused on infancy, this period is considered a “sensitive” time. Hearing, language and higher cognitive sensory pathways develop and peak during the first three years of life.The term “brain architecture” refers to the structure that begins to form in the womb. According to the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, a major influence on brain architecture is interaction with caregivers.
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Not long after birth, gaps between babies with and without economic advantages begin to show. According to the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), by 18 months, children across socioeconomic groups show dramatic differences in vocabulary. By 24 months, low-income children are already six months behind more advantaged peers in language processing skills. By age 4, children from low-income families fall an average of seven months behind in mathematical knowledge. What happens – or does not happen – at home before a child begins school often sets a trajectory that is difficult to change.
If students are reading at grade level around the age of 8, most school districts can keep them on track. According to Elliot Regenstein, an expert on educational policy, very few districts can help struggling students catch up before the end of high school. Other research indicates that children who are ready for school at age 5 are less likely to drop out of high school. They are also likely to have lower rates of chronic disease and substance abuse. Establishing a strong brain foundation in early childhood has lifelong impacts.
How can a parent build their child’s brain? The Basics, a research-based early childhood initiative that helps families support healthy brain development in young children, suggests the following five tenets: maximizing love and minimizing stress; talking, singing and pointing; counting, grouping and comparing; exploring through movement and play; and reading and discussing stories.
Not all parents engage in these practices with their children, likely because they were never taught to do so. According to Dr. Dana Suskind, author of Parent Nation: Unlocking Every Child’s Potential, Fulfilling Society’s Promise, we may believe that parenting is intuitive, but it is not. Her team at the TMW Center for Early Learning and Public Health developed SPEAK – the Scale of Parent/Provider Expectations and Knowledge. Her team took SPEAK into the hospital and interviewed mothers who had recently given birth about their knowledge of the infant brain. They asked questions like: Is educational TV good for learning language? Is there language development in the first six months of life? Is a baby’s brain born or built? They discovered that parents with more education knew more about how a baby’s brain develops.
Across the country, numerous programs support early parent education. Springfield District 186 implements the Parent as Teachers program, an evidence-based home visiting program. Decatur has a similar program, Baby TALK. Sangamon County utilizes Nurse-Family Partnership. Some states have launched more comprehensive programs, like Georgia’s Talk With Me Baby and California’s First 5.For greater continuity, we need a large-scale public health campaign from the federal government, much like past campaigns on handwashing and seat belt use. Much of this research has been known for decades. In a world of fractured media sources, we now struggle to share information in a way that reaches the greatest number of people.
Dr. Suskind and The Basics suggest that pediatricians weave this education into well-visit appointments. Of course, this is difficult as pediatricians have so much to discuss with parents in a limited time. Another possibility is to establish infant and toddler literacy as part of school-based literacy or reading nights during the school year. The infant and toddler siblings of our current students will be at our schools soon enough. Sessions on the power of reading to your child, teaching the alphabet beyond the ABC song, and how to talk to your infant could help raise awareness among parents. Libraries could provide similar educational opportunities through story time.
As a community, we must begin to focus on prevention, also known as starting upstream. A quote often attributed to Bishop Desmond Tutu states: “There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.”
Strengthening how parents interact with their babies may be one of the most attainable ways to chart a different course for many of our children.
Melissa Hostetter is a science teacher at Franklin Middle School. She is a certified academic language practitioner and tutors at the Children’s Dyslexia Center of Springfield.
This article appears in March 5-11, 2026.
