USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) is committed to helping America’s children get the nutritious food they need to learn and grow. Direct certification for school meals is one important strategy to make that possible for the low-income children. This process links student enrollment records to states’ Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program data, so children receiving SNAP or TANF can be directly certified for free school meals without having to submit additional paperwork through applications.
By using data already verified through SNAP and TANF, direct certification improves efficiency and accuracy for schools. Just as importantly, families are spared the burden of a separate meals application. Congress made direct certification a requirement for all schools through the 2004 Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act.
A series of reports on direct certification recently released by USDA show how, together with our school partners around the country, we are able to help kids, families, and schools access healthy breakfasts and lunches with less paperwork and greater efficiency:
- Since the direct certification requirement was established, states have been steadily increasing their rates of children directly certified through partnerships between the education and social and human services agencies, from about 68 percent in School Year 2007-2008, to nearly 90 percent last year.
- While the national average is high, the rates vary by state. FNS is working with states to help them further improve their direct certification rates. A three-report series looking at ways to improve direct certification will help states identify additional strategies to increase their rates. For instance, those reports found that matching monthly, rather than a few times a year, can improve rates, and using software to help match uncommon names or incomplete contact information can help states and districts foster better matches.
- Through the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 (HHFKA), Congress directed FNS to expand direct certification beyond SNAP and TANF to pilot test the impact of directly certifying with Medicaid. Two evaluation reports of the demonstration show that directly certifying children on Medicaid could increase the direct certification rate by up to 12 percentage points, thus ensuring children in need have access to healthy food while greatly reducing the amount of paperwork schools have to process.
FNS is committed to improving efficiency while ensuring children have access to the healthy school meals they need to be energized and ready to learn each day at school. Direct certification is one of the ways we work with our school partners to fulfill that commitment, reducing paperwork for families and schools through maximizing the best aspects of technology and partnerships.
To learn more about FNS nutrition assistance efforts, follow us on Twitter at @USDANutrition.
