Smart Start is North Carolina's model early childhood initiative to help all North Carolina children enter school healthy and prepared for success. Serving all 100 counties in the state, Smart Start's services include child care subsidies and health and family support services. This report describes the program, focusing on its impact on the state's children, families, and communities. The report emphasizes that Smart Start improves children's school readiness, supports children with special needs, and improves access to children's health services. In addition, the program provides families with child care assistance, provides families more child care choices, and provides support to families of young children. With regard to child care quality, Smart Start has been shown to improve access to high quality child care, improve the quality of child care, improve teacher education, and improve child care teacher retention. The report emphasizes the need to improve early childhood wages. Also noted is the community impact of the initiative in terms of improved collaboration and coordination of child and family services, and improved quality and economy of North Carolina communities. In sidebars throughout the report, local Smart Start accomplishments are highlighted. The report concludes with a list of contributors to the public-private partnership. (KB)