Evaluation of Demonstrations of National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program Direct Certification of Children Receiving Medicaid Benefits: Access Evaluation Report

This report presents findings from the Access Evaluation, a study component that is designed to assess the potential impacts of 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, researchers at Mathematica collected (1) student enrollment files for a sample of school districts in the demonstration and (2) Medicaid data for school-age children. We matched these two types of files based on individual identifiers, such as name and date of birth, to simulate DC-M. If a student was found to be enrolled in Medicaid, we assessed whether the income information in the Medicaid file indicated that the student would be eligible for free meals and determined the certification status that each student in the school enrollment file would have if DC-M were used in addition to actual SY 2011–2012 certification procedures. Impacts are measured by comparing these simulated certification outcomes under DC-M to districts’ actual certifications that year. Such comparisons reveal the extent to which DC-M could increase the number of students certified for free meals and decrease the reliance on applications. Separate simulations show the potential impact of DC-M under different matching algorithms and policies.