Welcome to Thrive in Five, Boston's School Readiness Roadmap!

Thrive in Five is a comprehensive school readiness roadmap for Boston driven by the scientific, economic and civic imperative to focus on young children and their families. The plan, the result of a year-long public and private collaboration that engaged over 400 individuals, lays out powerful goals and well-researched strategies to ensure that children enter school ready to learn.

Why now?
Effective early childhood supports offer substantial returns on investment, as great as $14 to $17 for every $1 invested. In the first few years of life, children's brains develop at a faster pace than during any other time. That growth lays the foundation for all future development and learning. However, for many children the playing field upon school entry is far from level. The workplace today's children will enter upon high school or college graduation will demand capabilities that are far more difficult to master without the critical building blocks laid in early childhood. Investing in children early is far more effective and efficient than treating problems at a later age. When children thrive through their first five years, they are poised to be strong lifelong learners, earners and engaged citizens.

How it works
The Thrive in Five roadmap is unique in that it addresses all dimensions of children's development and learning through effective partnerships between public and private sector institutions. It is a ten-year movement that for the first time aligns families, educators, health and human service providers, the private sector, and City departments working in collaboration with State agencies to ensure that all children will be ready for sustained school success. Thrive in Five is based on the following equation, understanding that the collective effort of everyone involved in children's lives will support their success:

Boston’s School Readiness Equation

Thrive in Five Goals

• Parents will be able to obtain the accurate, culturally appropriate information they seek on child development, parenting, and school readiness, as well as community resources that help to strengthen families.
• Boston will become the city with the highest quality early education and care system for all young children – infants, toddlers, preschoolers and kindergartners – in all settings: family child care, private/community-based centers, Head Start/Early Head Start, and school-based early education.
• Health care, early intervention and other systems that serve young children will succeed in earlier detection and more effective responses to barriers to child development and school readiness, including earlier detection of family and environmental conditions that can create “toxic stress” in young children.
• The many sectors in Boston will work together to ensure children’s school readiness becomes and remains a top priority.
• Thrive in Five will track and report on its success in ensuring universal school readiness.

How will we succeed?
Thrive in Five draws on Boston’s considerable strengths to advance clear strategies that surround children and families with school readiness supports, raise the quality of early education and care, screen earlier for threats to healthy development, conduct public engagement campaigns about the importance of the early years, and more.

Progress toward universal school readiness will be reported regularly. Among the indicators to be tracked, Thrive in Five seeks to increase the percentage of:

• Parents who report accessing information and resources they need to support their child’s development;
• Nationally accredited early education and care programs in Boston;
• New parents who are offered a newborn visit to connect to vital services;
• Children ages birth to five screened for developmental delays, behavior issues and environmental risk factors;
• Parents who are civically engaged and registered to vote; and
• Circulation rate of picture books in the Boston Public Library system.

Click here to download the Executive Summary of Thrive in Five.

Click here read a the press release about the announcement of Thrive in Five.

Click here read a two-page overview of Thrive in Five.

Click here to read Stories of Progress, stories that illustrate how children's and families' lives will be different as a result of Thrive in Five.

Check back often for further updates and a link to the full report (available late April), and join our mailing list to receive updates from Thrive in Five.