Direct certification simplifies the process of certifying certain children for free school meals by eliminating the need for households to apply. The 2004 Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act required all local educations agencies (LEAs) to establish a system of direct certification by...

In this article Mathematica's family support experts present final findings from a large-scale, random assignment evaluation of Building Strong Families (BSF), a program offering relationship skills education to low-income, unmarried parents who are expecting or recently had a baby. The study...

This study investigated factors that influence students’ participation in the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs using recent data from a large, nationally representative sample of students certified for free and reduced-price meals during the 2005–2006 school year. Whether...

This report to Congress assesses the effectiveness of state and local efforts to directly certify children for free school meals without the need for household applications by using data from other means-tested programs. At the start of the 2010-2011 school year, 1.9 million more children were...

This report provides impacts of BSF on couples about 15 months after they applied for the program. Early impacts show that, when results are averaged across the eight individual programs included in the evaluation, BSF did not achieve its primary objective of improving the stability and quality...

Over the years, concern has mounted that many of the more than 26 million children certified to receive free or reduced-price meals may be ineligible for these benefits. This brief looks at the issue of reducing payment errors in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and the School Breakfast...

This article investigates the long-term economic gains of current and former TANF recipients and explores the extent to which these recipients experience steady economic progress. Results suggest that recipients generally show economic progress but that there is considerable instability and...