Illinois, the 21st state admitted to the United States of America, is the most populous and demographically diverse

Midwestern state and the fifth most populous state in the nation.[6] With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and western Illinois, and natural resources like coal, timber, and petroleum in the south, Illinois has a broad economic base. Illinois is an important transportation hub; the Port of Chicago connects the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River via the Illinois River. Illinois is often viewed as a microcosm of the United States; an Associated Press analysis of 21 demographic factors found Illinois the "most average state", while Peoria has long been a proverbial social and cultural bellwether.[6] With a population near 40,000 between 1300 and 1400 AD, the Mississippian-culture city of Cahokia, in what is now southern Illinois, was the largest city within the future United States until after 1790, when it was surpassed by New York City. Gradually Cahokia and the area were abandoned, and at the time of the American Revolution, only about 2,000 Native American hunters and a small number of French villagers inhabited the Illinois area.[7] United States migrant settlers began arriving from Kentucky in the 1810s; Illinois achieved statehood in 1818. The future metropolis of Chicago was founded in the 1830s on the banks of the Chicago River, one of the few natural harbors on southern Lake Michigan.[8] Railroads and John Deere's invention of the self-scouring steel plow made central Illinois' rich prairie into some of the world's most productive and valuable farmlands, attracting immigrant farmers from Germany and Sweden. By 1900, the growth of industrial jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Its manufacturing made the state a major arsenal in both World wars. The Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to Chicago formed a large and important community that created the city's famous jazz and blues cultures. Approximately 74% of the population of Illinois resides in the northeastern corner of the state, primarily within the city of Chicago and the surrounding area. Three U.S. Presidents have been elected while they were living in Illinois Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and Barack Obama. Ronald Reagan was born in Tampico and grew up in Dixon. Lincoln is interred at Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield. "Illinois" is the modern spelling for the early French missionary/explorers' name for the Illinois people, a name that was spelled endless ways in the early records. One very highly regarded reference book gives this very concise and widely accepted summary of the expressions in question: "Illinois (Ilinwek, from ilini 'man', iw 'is', ek plural termination, changed by the French to ois)". The book lists dozens of spellings for "Illinois" and "Illiniwek" before 1800. Among the earliest are "Alimouek", "Alini8ek", (The French alphabet had no 'w' so '8' was often used for that sound.) "Eriniouai", "Eriniwek", "Ilinioetz", "Ilinioek", and "Ilinois".[9] An 1864 history states that "Erinouai," "Erinouek," "Alimouek," "Ilinimouek," "Liniouek," and "Illinoets" are all synonyms of "Illinois," all mean the men.[10] The earliest mention of what has come to be "Illinois" was Paul LeJeune's 1640 account that the Eriniouaj were neighbors of the Winnebago.[11] The first European face-to-face meeting with the Illinois on their territory came in 1674 when Marquette followed a beaten prairie path to a village and asked the people who they were. "They replied that they were Ilinois."[12] Father Jacques Marquette, the great Jesuit missionary and explorer, made this oft-quoted observation about that name:
When one speaks the word Ilinois, it is as if one said, in their language, the men". As if the other Savages were looked upon by them merely as animals". [13]

In 1697 Father Louis Hennepin, another missionary, offered this observation:

The etymology of this word Illinois comes, as we have said, from the term Illini, which, in the language of that Nation. signifies a man finished or complete.[14]

In the same volume he began a chapter about "...the lake named by the Savages Illinoack & by us Illinois" with these words:
The Lake of the Illinois signifies in the language of these Barbarians, the Lake of the Men. The word Illinois signifies a grown man, who is in the prime of his age and vigor.[15]

An 1871 study described the Illinois people's name for themselves as evidence that the "conviction of personal and tribal excellence stamps itself on every savage language."[16] This entire body of historical contemporary documentation is dismissed by at least one Miamilanguage theoretical linguist. David Costa maintains that theoretical analysis of modernized, Anglicized spellings reveals that the Illinois component of the Miami-Illinois language is merely folklore and urban legend "which has even crept into anthropological and historical usage," that "neither Ilinioek, Illiniwek, nor, least of all, Illini are legitimate names for the Illinois," that the Illinois were not among the people who considered speaking the Illinois language speaking "in the regular way," and that, in short, virtually all analyses of the name Illinois offered over the past 300 years are in fact wrong.[17] In 2000 Costa formulated a "reconstructed or hypothetical phonemicized form," Inoka.[18] He came to treat this hypothetical construct as a standard vernacular expression, and developed the point of view that it was this expression that the Illinois people used to refer to themselves rather than any of the "unworkable" urban legend variations of "Illinois" or "Illiniwek." However, a search of the early missionary/explorer records before 1800 for "Inoka" or "*Inoka" does not produce any hits because, of course, the expression first appeared in print in 2000.[19] A search for "Illinois," on the other hand, documents that the name was used by the Illinois people to refer to themselves and by others to refer to the Illinois in hundreds of pages in dozens of volumes published before 1800.[20] [21] The state is named for the French adaptation of an Algonquian language (perhaps Miami) word apparently meaning "s/he speaks normally" (Miami ilenweewa,[22][23] Proto-Algonquian *elen-, "ordinary" and -we, "to speak").[24] Alternately, the name is often associated with the indigenous Illiniwek people, a consortium of Algonquian-language tribes that once thrived in the area. The name Illiniwek is frequently (incorrectly) said to mean "tribe of superior men";[25] or "men". Both etymologies are unworkable. In the 20th century, Illinois emerged as one of the most important states in the union, with a population of nearly 5 million bolstered by continued immigration from southern and eastern Europe, and by African-Americans from Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas. By the end of the century, the population would reach 12.4 million. The Century of Progress World's Fair was held at Chicago in 1933. Oil strikes in Marion County and Crawford County lead to a boom in 1937, and, by 1939, Illinois ranked fourth in U.S. oil production. Following World War II, Argonne National Laboratory, near Chicago, activated the first experimental nuclear power generating system in the United States in 1957. By 1960, the first privately financed nuclear plant in United States, Dresden 1, was dedicated near Morris. Chicago became an ocean port with the opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway in 1959. The seaway and the Illinois Waterway connected Chicago to both the Mississippi River and the Atlantic Ocean. In 1960, Ray Kroc opened the first McDonald's franchise in Des Plaines (which still exists today as a museum, with a working McDonald's across the street).

In 1970, the state's sixth constitutional convention authored a new constitution to replace the 1870 version, which was ratified in December. The first Farm Aid concert was held in Champaign to benefit American farmers, in 1985. The worst upper Mississippi River flood of the century, the Great Flood of 1993, inundated many towns and thousands of acres of farmland. It also flooded many homes and streets slowing transportational services.[29]

Illinois State Board of Education

The Illinois State Board of Education or ISBE, autonomous of the governor and the state legislature, administers public education in the state. Local municipalities and their respective school districts operate individual public schools but the ISBE audits performance of public schools with the Illinois School Report Card. The ISBE also makes recommendations to state leaders concerning education spending and policies.

Primary and secondary schools

Education is compulsory from kindergarten through the twelfth grade in Illinois, commonly but not exclusively divided into three tiers of primary and secondary education: elementary school, middle school or junior high school and high school. District territories are often complex in structure. In some cases, elementary, middle and junior high schools of a single district feed into high schools in another district.

Colleges and universities

Using the criterion established by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, there are eleven "National Universities" in the state. Three of these rank among the top 100 National Universities in the United States, as determined by the U.S. News & World Report rankings: the University of Chicago (8), Northwestern University (12) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (40).[83] The other eight National Universities, including two more that rank in the top 120 are: Illinois Institute of Technology (102), Loyola University Chicago (116), DePaul University, Illinois State University, Southern Illinois University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Northern Illinois University and Trinity International University.[83] Besides the "National Universities", Illinois has several other major universities and colleges, both public and private, including: Eastern Illinois University, Northeastern Illinois University, Western Illinois University, Columbia College Chicago, Bradley University, Roosevelt University, Chicago State University and Robert Morris University. There are also dozens of small liberal arts colleges across the state. Additionally, Illinois supports 49 public community colleges in the Illinois Community College System.

Museums
Illinois has numerous museums. The state of the art Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield is the largest presidential library in the country; numerous museums in the city of Chicago are considered some of the best in the world. These include the John G. Shedd Aquarium, the Field Museum of Natural History, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Science and Industry. The Museum of Science and Industry is the only building remaining from the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus' discovery of the new world.