The purpose of this project is to engage with grassroots and grasstops early education partners to identify and conduct a landscape analysis of active North Carolina policies and regulations focused on young children and their families (birth to age 5) with a focus on policies that show effect or promise in mitigating (or exacerbate) racial disparities in early care and education. The focus of this work is multi-fold and includes:

• Examining current investments and reach of early care and education policies with attention on gaps, access, affordability, and impacts, as well as unintended consequences through a racial equity lens (e.g., reduction of home-based programs, fewer licensed programs, exclusionary practices);
• Exploring the use of data to examine the extent to which policies are mitigating racial disparities (or increasing them); and
• Developing an early childhood policy equity index to provide a metric to gauge whether a given policy will mitigate racial disparities through simulation tests.