National Technical Assistance Center Overview
Smart Start’s National Technical Assistance center (NTAC) provides assistance to states and localities that are working to assure that every child arrives at school healthy and ready to succeed. Our expertise is based upon more than a decade of success in the development of the nationally-recognized and award-winning Smart Start Initiative.
NTAC was created in 2001 in response to requests for help from every state in the nation. Smart Start had created a vision of what a successful early childhood initiative could look like and states and communities wanted to learn from that success.
NTAC now shares Smart Start’s expertise, successes and lessons learned with individuals, organizations, communities and states, guiding them through the process of creating and furthering their early childhood initiatives. Our assistance is based on a philosophy that:
- Every child should receive the developmental opportunities they need to arrive at school healthy and ready to succeed.
- States and communities should develop an early childhood system that best fits the needs, resources and cultural realities of their region.
- A comprehensive approach that includes high quality child care and education, health and family support is essential.
- Both a state and community-based approach is most effective.
What is Smart Start?
Smart Start was launched in 1993 in North Carolina to assure that every child in the state arrived at school healthy and ready to succeed. At the time, the state was at the bottom of many national rankings related to the health and well-being of children. It also had the worst quality child care in the country. State leaders recognized that change could only come through investment in the earliest years and that the public schools could never be successful in their job without assuring that children were starting school at a much higher level of readiness.
Since its inception more than a decade ago, many changes have occurred as a result of Smart Start and the state’s investment in early childhood.
- The number of children receiving higher quality child care has increased from 20% to nearly 80%.
- Studies by Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute show that children are arriving at school at a higher level of readiness, have better math and language skills and fewer behavioral problems, and sustain their success through third grade.
- North Carolina surged from near the bottom to closer to the top in a national ranking of 4th grade test scores as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
- Children in the state are now more likely to be immunized on time and have a regular source of health care.
- The coordination and effectiveness of local service agencies is now greatly improved.
For more information on the Smart Start Initiative
in North Carolina, click here.
Contact Us
For more information on how to take advantage of the services and resources available, contact Gerry Cobb, Director of Smart Start’s National Technical Assistance Center, at 919-821-9540
or via email at gscobb@ncsmartstart.org.