Data & Research
FNS conducted a study of the first two years of this demonstration to describe the implementation process and explore the effects on certification, participation, federal reimbursements, and state administrative costs. This report presents the findings from the first year of the demonstration evaluation, school year 2016–17.
This report responds to the requirement of PL 110-246 to assess the effectiveness of state and local efforts to directly certify children for free school meals.
The Food and Nutrition Service conducted the Direct Certification with Medicaid (DC-M) demonstration that enables selected States and districts to use household income data from Medicaid files to directly certify students for free school meals. This report focuses on the experiences of States and districts conducting DC-M during School Year (SY) 2013-2014, the second year of the demonstration. It examines whether DC-M leads to changes in the percentage of students certified, the number of meals served, Federal reimbursements, and certification costs incurred by districts. It also assesses State-level administrative costs and identifies the challenges that States and districts face when implementing DC-M.
This report responds to the requirement of PL 110-246 to assess the effectiveness of state and local efforts to directly certify children for free school meals. Direct certification is a process conducted by the states and by local educational agencies to certify eligible children for free meals without the need for household applications.
This report uses statistical modeling techniques to assess the relationship between direct certification performance and specific State practices, seeking best practices and providing recommendations for States to use when developing their Continuous Improvement Plans.
The evaluation analyzed administrative data acquired from the six States that participated in the 2012 Enhanced Summer Food Service Program (eSFSP) Demonstrations to examine the impact of the demonstrations on participation. It found that the impacts on participation were mixed. For the Backpack demonstration, sites in one State increased the number of children and meals served, sites in another State served more meals but did not increase the number of children served, and both meals and children served decreased in the third State. Analysis of the Meal Delivery demonstration indicates the demonstration likely increased the number of children served.
The purpose of this study is to describe current methods of direct certification used by state and local agencies and challenges facing states and local education agencies in attaining high matching rates.
This Congressional report summarizes the implementation and evaluation of two approaches tested in the summers of 2011 through 2013.
This report examines administrative data obtained from the eight states that operated the 2011 eSFSP demonstrations to assess changes within demonstration sites compared to non-demonstration sites.
In December 2000, FNS was authorized to conduct a pilot to increase SFSP participation in a number of states with low rates of feeding low-income children in the summer. Under the pilot, meals served by eligible sponsors in the 14 states are reimbursed at the maximum allowable rate. In addition, administrative record keeping for the pilot sponsors was reduced since they were no longer required to record administrative and operating costs separately and they did not have to report costs to state agencies.