Administrative Review & Training Grant Evaluation
Highlights
- Local Education Authorities make administrative errors in lunch programs
- The study examines various aspects of administrative review training (ART) grants.
- The study will determine the effectiveness of ART grant strategies.
State agencies oversee and review Local Educational Authorities (LEAs) that demonstrate a high level of, or a high risk for, administrative error and must adopt a robust and unified accountability system. To help state agencies, the Food and Nutrition Service funded administrative review training (ART) grants in 30 states for administrative oversight and training. The strategies that ART grantees use to reduce administrative errors vary widely.
The qualitative study will address research questions related to impacts on administrative errors and other outcomes that are not available from FNS administrative data. It will also examine how ART grantees sustain their activities after their funding has ended, describe challenges to implementation and sustainability of ART grant interventions, and recommend how those challenges may be overcome. We will compile and analyze in NVivo data from interviews with state agencies and LEAs. We will use qualitative methods to identify themes, consistent patterns, and variations.
This qualitative study, which includes document review and stakeholder interviews, will enable FNS to obtain in-depth research evidence about the effectiveness of individual state strategies, their long-term impact on the administrative review process and associated error rates, and cross-cutting evidence about the overall effectiveness of the grants. This evaluation will inform FNS about whether and how ART grants have "moved the needle" on the integrity and compliance of school meals programs and how those impacts can be strengthened and sustained to make better use of program resources.
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