This report summarizes findings from the School Meals Operations Study (SMO), part of an ongoing series to assess school meal operations on a school year (SY) basis. This volume of the study covers July 2021 through the end of September 2022 and includes SY 2021-2022. When the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020, the Families First Coronavirus…

We estimate the effect of universal free school meal access through the Community Eligibility Program (CEP) on child BMI. Through the CEP, schools with high percentages of students qualified for free or reduced-priced meals can offer free breakfast and lunch to all students. With administrative data from a large school district in Georgia, we use…

Abstract Households with children eligible for Free School Meals are at risk of food insecurity. This paper reports on a rapid-response study that investigated the impact of the school food voucher scheme during the COVID-19 crisis on young people, families and schools. It pays close attention to the reliance of the state on the goodwill of…

Purpose/Objectives: Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) participation rates often underserve the number of children in the community needing access to food. Each year, District 87 in Bloomington, Illinois offers children 18 years old and younger a free lunch at six feeding sites throughout the community as part of the SFSP. During the summer of…

Accurately measuring the family incomes of students is essential to allocating school resources that meet the educational needs of all students, particularly the needs of students from low-income families. With the onset of the COVID-19 health and economic crisis, the need to accurately assess the financial condition of families who are suffering…

This article explores the perspectives of 23 girls in their second and third years (12-14 years) at four English secondary schools. Having tracked the girls since their final year of primary school (10-11 years), the article explores how they continue to negotiate powerful discourses in their lives. It uses a Foucauldian framework (1979) to…

Public spending on children represents an effort to invest in the nation's future by supporting children's healthy development and human potential. To inform policymakers, children's advocates, and the general public about how public funds are spent on children, this 15th edition of the annual "Kids' Share" report provides an updated…

Socioeconomic status and gender are important demographic variables that strongly relate to academic achievement. This study examined the early literacy skills differences between 4 sociodemographic groups, namely, boys ineligible for free or reduced-price lunch (FRL), girls ineligible for FRL, boys eligible for FRL, and girls eligible for FRL.…

Purpose/Objectives: In 2010, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act updated the nutrition standards for the National School Lunch Program (NSLP). The improved standards impact children who participate in the NSLP, but not the children who are bringing a packed lunch from home. Recent research suggests packed lunches are lower in nutritional quality…

Background: Schools can play a major role in prevention and intervention for childhood obesity. We describe changes in elementary school cafeteria lunch sales patterns resulting from nutritional improvements in menu offerings that were part of a community-wide focus on health. Methods: Elementary school lunch sales data were collected for 1 week…

This report presents findings from the Access Evaluation, a study component that is designed to assess the potential impacts of direct certification-Medicaid (DC-M) on students' access to free school meals by conducting retrospective simulations of DC-M in school year 2011-2012, the year before the demonstration began. For the Access Evaluation,…

Purpose/Objective: The purpose of this study was to compare the nutrient content of National School Lunch Program (NSLP) lunches and lunches brought from home (LBFH) lunches in elementary schools participating in the HealthierUS School Challenge (HUSSC). Methods: Participants included students in grades 2-5 in four Washington state HUSSC…

Purpose: This study assessed student perceptions of school meals under the new federal meal patterns for the National School Lunch Program (NSLP). Student feedback is instrumental in developing strategies to increase and maintain NSLP participation, satisfaction, and ultimately provide students with a healthy meal. Methods: Anonymous…

This report presents the results of a thorough study conducted by American Institutes for Research (AIR) to investigate the cost of providing an "adequate" education to California students attending public elementary, middle, and high schools. The study addresses the following question: "What is the cost of providing all California…

The authors examined long-term outcomes for children who experienced delayed entry to kindergarten or kindergarten retention. They used a cohort of 6,841 students to compare these groups to each other and typically progressing peers. First, the authors compared the groups on demographic and early childhood variables. For the long-term school-based…