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Data & Research

Resource | Research | Assessing/Improving Operations USDA Community Eligibility Provision Characteristics Study, SY 2016-17

This Community Eligibility Provision Characteristics study is the first comprehensive study since CEP became available nationwide in SY 2014-15. The study was designed to provide USDA with information about the impact of CEP and includes both an implementation and impact component.

03/17/2022
Resource | Research | Assessing/Improving Operations School Nutrition and Meal Cost Study

This study is the first nationally representative, comprehensive assessment of the school meal programs since the updated nutrition standards for school meals were phased in beginning School Year 2012-2013. A study methodology report that describes the study design, sampling and data collection and a summary report that provides a brief overview of the study and key findings from the various reports are also available.

10/19/2021
Resource | Notices | Assessing/Improving Operations Comment Request - School Nutrition and Meal Cost Study-II

This collection is a revision of a currently approved collection for the School Nutrition and Meal Cost Study-II. The purpose of SNMCS-II is to provide a comprehensive picture of school food service operations and the nutritional quality, cost, and acceptability of meals served in the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program.

09/14/2021
Resource | Notices | Assessing/Improving Operations Information Collection: Fourth Access, Participation, Eligibility and Certification Study Series (APEC IV)

This collection is a reinstatement, with change, of a previously approved collection for which approval has expired for the fourth Access, Participation, Eligibility, and Certification study series (APEC IV).

08/04/2021
Resource | Research | Assessing/Improving Operations Approaches to Measuring Erroneous Payments in the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program At The State Level

The second Access, Participation, Eligibility and Certification Study (APEC II) included a follow-on report that provided statistically-derived state-level estimates of school meals erroneous payments. However, while APEC II provided a rough indicator of relative risk for groups of states (e.g., higher than average, about average, lower than average), it was not a state-representative direct measure, and creating actual annual measures of such erroneous payments at the state level using APEC methodology is cost-prohibitive. This report explores alternative approaches to developing measurement-based state-specific estimates that are responsive to year-to-year changes in the actual underlying rate in each state. It also provides cost and burden estimates for the implementation of each of these methods.

08/29/2016
Resource | Research | Assessing/Improving Operations Program Error in the NSLP and SBP: Findings from the Second Access, Participation, Eligibility and Certification Study (APEC II)

FNS developed the Access, Participation, Eligibility and Certification (APEC) study series, which collects and analyzes data from a nationally representative sample of schools and school food authorities (SFAs) about every 5 years. APEC allows FNS to develop a national estimate of erroneous payment rates and amounts in three key areas: certification error, meal claiming error and aggregation error.  FNS recently completed APEC II, which collected data in School Year 2012-2013 and this report summarizes those findings.

05/01/2015
Resource | Research | Assessing/Improving Operations School Foodservice Indirect Cost Study

The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act directed USDA to study the extent to which school food authorities  participating in the National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs pay indirect costs to local education agencies. It specifically requested an assessment of the methodologies used to establish indirect costs, the types and amounts of indirect costs that are charged and not charged to the school foodservice account, and the types and amounts of indirect costs recovered by LEAs.

03/31/2014
Resource | Research | Cost Study School Lunch and Breakfast Cost Study - II

This study examines the cost of producing National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program meals during school year 2005-06. It measures both reported costs – costs charged directly to school food service accounts – and unreported costs – those costs paid by school districts in support of school food authority operations – to estimate the full cost of meal production.

04/10/2008
Resource | Research | Cost Study School Lunch and Breakfast Cost Study

The study examined the costs charged to SFAs (reported costs), as well as those costs incurred by the school district in support of SFA operations, but not charged to the SFA (unreported costs). Together, the reported costs and the unreported costs are the full cost of meal production.

10/01/1994
Resource | Research | Assessing/Improving Operations Child Nutrition Meal Cost Methodology Study

The study collected data on-site on food, labor, and other meal production costs for a five day period. A major goal was to test the feasibility of identifying meal production costs that were not charged to the SFA account (to obtain full costs) and directly allocating costs to different SFA activities.

05/01/1992
Page updated: January 12, 2024