Data & Research
This collection is a reinstatement, with change, of a previously approved collection for which approval has expired for the fourth Access, Participation, Eligibility, and Certification study series (APEC IV).
This report assesses that pilot and includes a qualitative evaluation of the vendor and ITO experiences and an assessment of pilot costs.
FNS developed the Access, Participation, Eligibility and Certification (APEC) study series, which collects and analyzes data from a nationally representative sample of schools and school food authorities (SFAs) about every 5 years. APEC allows FNS to develop a national estimate of erroneous payment rates and amounts in three key areas: certification error, meal claiming error and aggregation error. FNS recently completed APEC II, which collected data in School Year 2012-2013 and this report summarizes those findings.