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 purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of state agencies current peer group systems, and to provide guidance to state agencies on how to evaluate and update their systems. Specifically, it uses empirical analysis to identify one or more effective models for establishing vendor peer groups that could apply to most state agencies.

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 study examined the feasibility of creating a data collection system capable of directly and automatically providing USDA with item-level data on purchases made by SNAP households. Data would be captured at the point of sale from purchases made using EBT cards.

This report is a supplement to the WIC Participant and Program Characteristics 2014 biennial report. It describes the content of Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) food packages for packages or prescriptions issued to WIC participants in April 2014.

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 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 report estimates the average monthly food costs for each of 5 WIC participant subgroups and estimates total dollars spent on 17 major categories of WIC-eligible foods in FY 2010. The participant and food level costs in this report are USDA’s first estimates since implementation of the 2009 WIC food package changes.

This study describes some of the choices state agencies made as they exercised the flexibility offered during the implementation and describes the resulting food packages.