The National School Lunch Program: Looking at Direct Certification and Error Reduction

Guaranteeing that low-income children have enough to eat is the goal of the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), which provides free or reduced-price lunches to millions of children in the U.S. To help program administrators make sure that the program reaches its intended recipients in the most efficient and cost-effective way, Mathematica examined direct certification, application/verification pilot projects designed to reduce errors in certifying students for school meals, and the free/reduced-price eligibility verification process. A recent issue brief summarizes our studies of up-front documentation and direct certification to help inform the debate about how to make sure that low-income children have enough to eat while ensuring that the NSLP is run in an efficient and cost-effective way.

Direct Certification

In the late 1980s, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) introduced direct certification to improve program access and administrative efficiency. Under this process, students whose families receive food stamps or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families are automatically certified to receive free school meals, bypassing the usual application process. It was hoped that this process would expand access to the program for more eligible children, reduce administrative costs, and improve program integrity. As of the 2001-2002 school year, 61 percent of public school districts used direct certification.

Our evaluation of the direct certification process found that it increased the number of children certified for free meals by about 400,000 and slightly increased overall NSLP participation. It also improved program integrity. Based on the results of districts' eligibility verification processes, an estimated 12 to 33 percent of students certified for free or reduced-price meals are income ineligible for these benefits. However, direct certification decreased the rate of income ineligibility among certified students, since nearly all students directly certified for free meals are income eligible. The evaluation was funded by the USDA, Economic Research Service.

Application/Verification Pilot Projects

This study, conducted for the USDA, Food and Nutrition Service, evaluated pilot projects to test ways of reducing errors in approving students for free and reduced-price meals. Ten pilot projects used up-front documentation, which required that applicants document income with their applications for free or reduced-price school meals. Four projects tested graduated verification, which required that additional applications be verified if initial rates of error in the programs' usual 3 percent sample were higher than 25 percent.

The evaluation focused on the impacts of the pilots on the accuracy of the certification process, the extent to which the pilots deter ineligible families from applying for benefits, and barriers to eligible families’ participation. Key findings include:

• Deterrence of ineligible families: Neither up-front documentation nor graduated verification reduced the proportion of income-ineligible families who applied and were certified for free or reduced-price meals.
• Barriers for eligible families: Both approaches led to reductions in the proportion of income-eligible families who were certified for and obtained free or reduced-price meals.
• Accuracy among certified students: Compared to current procedures, neither approach changed certification accuracy at a detectable level.

Case Study of Verification Outcomes in Large Metropolitan Areas

This study, also conducted for the Food and Nutrition Service, examined verification processes in 21 large metropolitan districts around the country. It then assessed income eligibility of households with specific verification outcomes using data from in-person interviews with household members. Researchers focused on households selected for verification that did not respond to a request for documentation of their eligibility. On average, half the households selected for verification did not respond to this request. Among these nonresponding households, just over half were eligible for at least the level of benefits they had been receiving. About one-fourth of nonresponding households reapplied and were reapproved for free or reduced-price meals within the two to three months following verification.

Among households selected by districts for verification, about one-third had their eligibility for existing certification status verified (and thus, their benefits did not change as a result of verification). However, about one-third of households whose benefits were unchanged as a result of verification were income ineligible for their approved benefit level two to three months following verification.

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