The Consequences of States' Social Safety Net Accessibility for Direct Certification, CEP, and School Funding

• In Event: Differential Implementation and Impacts of Policies to Combat Poverty and Food Insecurity

Abstract

A range of federal and state-based programs target resources to children experiencing poverty —social service programs, education, food insecurity programs, and more. While all aim to ensure children have the resources they need to be healthy and successful at school, these programs are not centrally coordinated. Policy changes for one program can result in unintended consequences for children being served by another.   Social safety net and school funding formulas are seemingly disparate policies. However, they are increasingly becoming intertwined as state and districts’ increased adoption of universal free meal programs like Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) have resulted in policymakers more heavily relying on measures like direct certification (i.e., students that are identified as low-income based on their participation in SNAP, TANF, and/or Medicaid) instead of free and reduced-priced meal application data (FRPM) in state funding formulas. This study evaluates how states’ social safety net availability—policies outside of states’ education funding formulas—influence which students are identified as low-income via direct certification and the consequences for district funding.  Forty-five states allocate additional dollars to school districts based on the share of students in poverty. State-level social safety net policies ultimately affect students’ access to school meal programs and the district- and school-level resources students receive through poverty-weighting in states’ funding formulas. Conceptually, many of these same students captured in FRPM application data should be captured through direct certification data. However, direct certification does not include those who are eligible but not participating in social safety net programs, and social safety net income eligibility thresholds are often capped at 130% of the federal poverty line (while FRPM includes households earning up to 185% of the federal poverty line). Moreover, the policies around which social safety net programs are included in direct certification and the availability of social safety net programs vary by state. An additional layer of complexity, on top of program availability, is states’ ability to determine income eligibility limits, work requirements, and administrative burden for some social safety net programs, as well as the generosity of social safety nets. This paper will answer the following: How do the social safety net policies (and their associated accessibility) states use to determine direct certification vary across states?  Based on states’ availability of social safety net programs, how does direct certification data differ across states, and does it reflect the population of students eligible for social safety net programs? To what extent do states’ social safety net programs affect the ability of state funding formulas to target aid to students experiencing poverty and high poverty districts?

Author

• Emily K Gutierrez, Urban Institute
  Presenting Author