For three years, EdNC’s Liz Bell and Katie Dukes — supported by Eric Frederick — have been working together to combine solutions journalism and public policy analysis to better understand what is happening, what isn’t happening, and what must happen in early care and education across North Carolina.
If you don’t know them, here is more about Liz, and here is more about Katie.
With three guiding principles — early care and education is an economic driver, state policy needs to be connected to local reality, solutions will point the way forward — and relationships in 10 states informing our understanding, Liz and Katie have become peer experts and thought leaders in the field in North Carolina and beyond.
Liz was featured in the Take Care documentary. Katie was invited to be a 2024 Aspen Ideas: Health Fellow.
In 2025, we will release research on increasing the utilization of child care grants at community colleges, and we are conducting a model analysis of how community colleges provide early care and education in their communities.
If you haven’t already, sign up for their newsletter Early Bird and their Facebook group. You can also host a screening of the documentary.
Thank you to our funders who have so generously created this opportunity for us to really move the needle for little ones across our state and to the providers who we feel like have become part of us.
Featured Read
North Carolina once led the way in early childhood policy and investment. Five other states are showing us how to do it again.
EdNC visited five states that have stepped up as leaders — Michigan, Massachusetts, Vermont, Oregon, and New Mexico — to see what lessons they had for North Carolina.... Read the rest
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Experts make the urgent case: ‘Child care is a public good’
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EdExplainer | How babies’ brains develop
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EdExplainer | Why early childhood education isn’t ‘day care’
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WATCH | Take Care: North Carolina's Child Care Crisis Affects Everyone
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All of EdNC's research and reporting on early child care