The US Department of Agriculture runs a large array of farm and food subsidy programs. The school lunch and breakfast programs are two of the largest, which together with related school food programs will cost federal taxpayers an estimated $35 billion in 2025. Thirty million children, about 58 percent of students in public schools, receive school…

The federal child nutrition programs provide assistance to schools and other institutions in the form of cash, commodity food, and administrative support (such as technical assistance and administrative funding) based on the provision of meals and snacks to children. The programs provide financial support and/or foods to the institutions that…

The federal government has a long history of investing in programs for feeding children, starting with federal aid for school lunch programs in the 1930s. Today, federal child nutrition programs support food served to children in schools and a variety of other institutional settings. The child nutrition programs support meals and snacks served to…

The history of the school lunch program is laden with the political wrangling and compromises that usually beset massive government initiatives, and as with other government initiatives, the results of the wrangling and compromises have tended to be sadly durable. The school lunch program has consistently been viewed and managed not primarily as a…

Relatively little research has explored whether schools differ in their effectiveness for different group of pupils (e.g. by ethnicity, poverty or gender), for different curriculum subjects (e.g. English, mathematics or science) or over time (different cohorts). This paper uses multilevel modelling to analyse the national test results at age 7 and…

This report responds to the legislative requirement of Public Law 110-246 to assess the effectiveness of State and local efforts to directly certify children for free school meals. Under direct certification, children are determined eligible for free school meals without the need for household applications by using data from other means-tested…

This brochure presents state statistics for the following categories; Alabama public schools, 2012-13; Alabama State Board of Education members; financial data, FY 2012; public school size and enrollment, 2012-13 school year; transportation, 2012-13; school meals, 2011-12; school personnel, 2012-13; graduation rates, 2010-11; graduation…

Leaders of programs serving rural America need to act strategically to ensure the long-term success of their initiatives. This strategy brief describes the funding landscape of rural programs and highlights the unique challenges confronting rural program leaders. It describes the different public and private resources that can support…

The two basic family feeding programs are food stamps and commodity distribution. The current food stamp program provides the poor with spending power enough to purchase at the level of the Department of Agriculture's Economy Food Plan. The dollar equivalent of this plan is 112 dollars a month for a family of four. This amounts to an average per…

This paper discusses the effects of President Reagan's budget cuts on federally supported human service programs in New York. Various programs are analyzed to determine their vulnerability to budget reductions. It is suggested that employment, nutrition and health programs are most likely to be cut while education, adoption assistance, senior…

Studies show that childhood obesity has reached epidemic proportions in the United States. Today, more than 23 million American children--or nearly one in every three--are overweight or obese. If childhood obesity is left unaddressed, a generation of individuals could face health, social, and economic challenges that promise to stress government…

In 2005 the Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA) commissioned the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) to gather evidence on local authority (LA) and school approaches to nutrition in schools in order to inform the work of the WLGA Schools Food Task and Finish Group. This report presents the findings of that research.…

This book presents a collection of papers that define comprehensive school health programs and their components and provide action steps for their implementation at the local, state, and national levels: (1) "Linking Health and Learning: An Overview of Coordinated School Health Programs" (Floretta Dukes McKenzie and Julius B. Richmond); (2)…