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Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2010. Developing and Evaluating Methods for Using American Community Survey Data to Support the School Meals Programs: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12917.
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Appendix C
Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff

ALLEN L. SCHIRM (Chair) is vice president and director of human services research at Mathematica Policy Research. His principal research interests include small-area estimation, census methods, and sample and evaluation design, with application to studies of child well-being and welfare, food and nutrition, and education policy. For the National Research Council’s Committee on National Statistics, he has served on panels on (1) the Design of the 2010 Census Program of Evaluations and Experiments, (2) Research on Future Census Methods, (3) Formula Allocations, and (4) Estimates of Poverty for Small Geographic Areas. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association, and was recently chair of its Social Statistics Section. He has an A.B. in statistics from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania.


DAVID M. BETSON is associate professor of economics and former director of the Hesburgh Program in Public Service at the University of Notre Dame. He is a research affiliate with the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin and the Joint Center for Poverty Research at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University. His previous positions have been at the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin and the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. At the National Research Council, he has served on many activities of the Committee on National Statistics, including the Planning Group for the Workshop to Assess the Current Status of Actions Taken in Response to “Measuring Poverty: A New Approach”; the Panel

Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2010. Developing and Evaluating Methods for Using American Community Survey Data to Support the School Meals Programs: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12917.
×

on Estimates of Poverty for Small Geographic Areas; as chair of the Panel on Evaluation of USDA’s Methodology for Estimating Eligibility and Participation for the WIC Program; the Panel on Poverty and Family Assistance; and the Panel to Evaluate Microsimulation Models for Social Welfare Programs. In 2004, he was designated a lifetime national associate of the National Academies. His research has dealt with the impact of tax and transfer programs on the economy and the distribution of income. A particular research interest is child support policy, on which he has written academic papers and consulted with numerous state governments on the development of their child support guidelines. In 2007, he was appointed to the Washington State Commission on the Review of Child Support Guidelines. He has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.


MARIANNE P. BITLER is associate professor of economics at the University of California, Irvine, and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Children’s Program and Health Economics Program. She is also a faculty affiliate in demographic and social analysis at the University of California, Irvine, a visiting scholar at the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, and a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor in Bonn, Germany. Previously, she was a postdoctoral fellow and then an economist at the RAND Corporation, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, and an economist on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve in the Division of Research and Statistics (where she worked on the Survey of Small Business Finances). Her research interests include labor economics, health economics, public economics, and applied microeconomics. Her publications include several articles on participation in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), which appeared in the Journal of Human Resources, the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, the Review of Agricultural Economics, and the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. She has a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.


F. JAY BREIDT is professor and chair in the Department of Statistics at Colorado State University. Formerly, he was assistant and associate professor in the Department of Statistics and member of the Survey Section of the Statistical Laboratory at Iowa State University. This section has as major focus design and estimation for large-scale environmental surveys, particularly the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Resources Inventory. His research interests include time series, environmental monitoring, and survey sampling. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and winner of the 2004 Distinguished Achievement Award

Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2010. Developing and Evaluating Methods for Using American Community Survey Data to Support the School Meals Programs: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12917.
×

from the American Statistical Association Section on Statistics and the Environment. At the National Research Council, he has served on several panels: the Census Bureau’s Reengineered Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP); Review of Recreational Fisheries Survey Methods; and Enhancing the Data Infrastructure in Support of Food and Nutrition Programs, Research and Decision Making. He prepared two papers for the workshop sponsored by the Committee on National Statistics Panel on Using Data from the American Community Survey (ACS), one of which looked at alternatives to the multiperiod estimation strategy for the ACS. He has M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in statistics from Colorado State.


ROBERT E. FAY is senior statistician at Westat, Inc., in Rockville, Maryland. He joined Westat in January 2008, after retiring from the U.S. Census Bureau. He is experienced in multiple aspects of sample surveys, including survey design, estimation, variance estimation, imputation and analysis of missing data, statistical modeling of data from complex samples, and small-area estimation. He is a member of the Advisory Committee on Statistical Methods to Statistics Canada and served on the Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology as well as its Subcommittee on Small-Area Estimation. His recent presentations and papers deal with using model-assisted estimation to integrate survey and administrative data in the American Community Survey. He has done considerable research on variance estimation. He received the Roger Herriot Award for Innovation in Federal Statistics in 2005 and the Gold Medal Award from the Department of Commerce in 1999. He was a member of the CNN Election Night Decision Team in 2004, 2006, and 2008. He has a Ph.D. in statistics from the University of Chicago.


ALBERTA C. FROST is a consultant regarding school nutrition and other food assistance programs. She was the director of the Office of Analysis, Nutrition and Evaluation at the Food and Nutrition Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture until her retirement in 2007. There she directed a staff that conducted research and developed data analysis systems to evaluate the performance and effectiveness of all U.S. food assistance programs and advised senior policy officials on nutrition policy and long-term planning. During her career, she directed research on the Food Stamp Program; the Food Distribution Programs; the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children; and the Child Nutrition Programs, including the National School Breakfast and School Lunch Programs. She has in-depth experience in food assistance policy and management systems as well as nutrition education and outreach strategies, and she has been the recipient of numerous USDA awards. She has an M.A. in human resources development from American University.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2010. Developing and Evaluating Methods for Using American Community Survey Data to Support the School Meals Programs: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12917.
×

MICHAEL F. GOODCHILD is professor in the Department of Geography and director of the Center for Spatial Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is associate director of the Alexandria Digital Library, director of the Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science, and chair of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a foreign fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. At the National Research Council, he serves on the Board on Research Data and Information, the Committee on Strategic Directions for Geographical Sciences in Next Decade, and the Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics. Among his awards are the Prix Vautrin Lud, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Geospatial Information and Technology Association, the Robert T. Aangeenbrug Distinguished Career Award from the Geographic Information Science and Systems Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers, the Founder’s Medal from the Royal Geographical Society, and the designation Educator of the Year by the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science. His research achievements center on the measurement, description, and analysis of phenomena on the surface of the earth. He has explored using digital information gathered by remote-sensing satellites to create spatial and environmental models of the planet, make maps, and create digital libraries of geographic information that can be widely accessed electronically. He has also developed mathematical models to help quantify the difference between these geographic measurements and the real world. He has a Ph.D. in geography from McMaster University.


NANCY J. KIRKENDALL (Study Director) is senior program officer for the Committee on National Statistics. Previously, she served as director of the Statistics and Methods Group of the Energy Information Administration (EIA) and as a member of EIA’s senior staff from January 2002 through January 2008, when she retired from federal service. She spent 3 years as senior mathematical statistician in the Statistical Policy Branch of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. There she served as the desk officer for the U.S. Census Bureau and chair of the Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology and led a variety of interagency activities. She is a fellow and past vice president of the American Statistical Association and a past president of the Washington Statistical Society. She is a recipient of the American Statistical Association’s Founder’s Award and the Roger Herriot Award for Innovation in Federal Statistics. For the National Research Council, she was a member of the Panel on Modernizing the Infrastructure of the National Science Foundation’s Federal Funds Survey. She has a Ph.D. in mathematical statistics from George Washington University.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2010. Developing and Evaluating Methods for Using American Community Survey Data to Support the School Meals Programs: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12917.
×

PARTHA LAHIRI is professor of statistics in the Joint Program in Survey Methodology at the University of Maryland and research professor at the Institute of Social Research, University of Michigan. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. He was a senior research fellow at the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 1990-1991 and 2004-2005; a senior research fellow at the U.S. Census Bureau from 1990 to 1991; and a member of the ASA Census Advisory Committee from 2002 to 2007, serving as its chair from 2006 to 2007. His research interests include survey sampling, small-area estimation, record linkage, model selection, Bayes and empirical Bayes inference, and multilevel models. He has given many workshops and short courses on small-area estimation. He has a Ph.D. in statistics from the University of Florida.


PENNY E. McCONNELL is director of Food and Nutrition Services for Fairfax County Public Schools. She has been a leader in establishing creative programs to improve nutrition in the Fairfax County school system. She and her coauthors were winners of Food Management Magazine’s Best Concept Award for Best Wellness Initiative in 2007 with their entry “Nutrition Integrity in the Energy Zone,” which describes a national model of a comprehensive, multidepartment wellness program that targets not only students, but also adults. She was president of the School Nutrition Association (formerly, the American School Food Service Association) and currently serves as the chair of the Global Child Nutrition Forum. She was president of the Virginia School Nutrition Association, where she is currently a member of the School Health Advisory Council, the Virginia Action for Healthy Kids, and the Public Policy and Legislation Committee. She received the 1999 Silver Plate Award in the elementary and secondary school category. She is a registered dietitian (RD) and chartered School Foodservice and Nutritionist Specialist (SFNS). She has a B.S. in home economics from the University of Manitoba and an M.S. in education from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.


SARAH NUSSER is professor in the Department of Statistics, director of the Center for Survey Statistics and Methodology, and a faculty member in the Human Computer Interaction Graduate Program and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Graduate Program at Iowa State University. She is also a member of the Iowa State University Geographic Information System Facility steering committee. Her research interests include using geospatial data in survey data collection and estimation, estimation methods for land cover map accuracy assessment, and sample design and measurement in surveys. She is familiar with the American Community

Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2010. Developing and Evaluating Methods for Using American Community Survey Data to Support the School Meals Programs: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12917.
×

Survey and other Census Bureau surveys via her work with Census Bureau researchers on using geospatial data for address listing and her service on the Census Advisory Committee of Professional Associations. She also has experience with administrative records databases through research involving welfare program evaluation and numerous operational survey projects. She was a senior research fellow at the Bureau of Labor Statistics through the American Statistical Association/National Science Foundation/Bureau of Labor Statistics research fellowship program from 2000 to 2001. She received the 2007 Distinguished Achievement Award from the Section on Statistics and the Environment of the American Statistical Association. She is a fellow of the American Statistical Association. At the National Research Council, she served on the Panel on Social Security Representative Payees. She has a Ph.D. in statistics from Iowa State University.


JOHN PERKINS is a consultant on issues of school nutrition programs and planning. He was formerly the senior director of the Child Nutrition Programs Division with the Texas Education Agency and assistant commissioner for food and nutrition with the Texas Department of Agriculture. As the state director, he administered the child nutrition programs in over 1,100 school districts and 8,000 schools in Texas, which involved the interpretation and implementation of federal and state regulations, directing monitoring and compliance reviews of participating school districts, and the disbursement of over $1 billion in federal and state funds. He was the primary architect of the new comprehensive Texas Public School Nutrition Policy. He worked with school administrators, parents, medical, health, and nutrition groups to develop and implement this policy, which was designed to improve the health of children and the nutrition environment in schools. He was the USDA Southwest Region State Director Representative for over 10 years and a member of the School Nutrition Association Regional Advisory Committee. He has chaired the Food and Nutrition Subcommittee of the Council of Chief State School Officers and served on numerous national and regional committees. He has an M.A. from the University of Texas, Austin, with a major in accounting and finance.


JAMES H. WYCKOFF is professor in the Currie School of Education at the University of Virginia. Formerly, he was professor of public administration, public policy, and economics at the State University of New York at Albany. He is a member of the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER) New York team, directs the Education Finance Research Consortium, and serves on the Policy Council for the Association of Public Policy Analysis and Man-

Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2010. Developing and Evaluating Methods for Using American Community Survey Data to Support the School Meals Programs: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12917.
×

agement and the editorial boards of Education Finance and Policy and the Economics of Education Review. He is a member of the Scientific Review Panel of the U.S. Department of Education and was an American Statistical Association fellow at the U.S. Census Bureau. His research focuses on the economics of education and state and local public economics. He has published on a variety of topics in education policy, including issues of teacher labor markets, school resource allocation, and school choice. Currently, he is working with colleagues to examine the attributes of New York City teachers and their preparation that are effective in increasing the performance of their students and the retention of effective teachers. At the National Research Council, he was a member of the Committee on National Statistics Panel on Estimates of Poverty for Small Geographic Areas and currently serves on the Committee on the Study of Teacher Preparation Programs. He received the Association of Teacher Educators Distinguished Research Award in 2007. He has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2010. Developing and Evaluating Methods for Using American Community Survey Data to Support the School Meals Programs: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12917.
×
Page 120
Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2010. Developing and Evaluating Methods for Using American Community Survey Data to Support the School Meals Programs: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12917.
×
Page 121
Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2010. Developing and Evaluating Methods for Using American Community Survey Data to Support the School Meals Programs: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12917.
×
Page 122
Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2010. Developing and Evaluating Methods for Using American Community Survey Data to Support the School Meals Programs: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12917.
×
Page 123
Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2010. Developing and Evaluating Methods for Using American Community Survey Data to Support the School Meals Programs: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12917.
×
Page 124
Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2010. Developing and Evaluating Methods for Using American Community Survey Data to Support the School Meals Programs: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12917.
×
Page 125
Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2010. Developing and Evaluating Methods for Using American Community Survey Data to Support the School Meals Programs: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12917.
×
Page 126
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The National School Lunch Program and the School Breakfast Program, administered by the Food and Nutrition Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), are key components of the nation's food security safety net, providing free or low-cost meals to millions of school-age children each day.

Under the most commonly adopted provisions, USDA reimburses districts for meals served on the basis of data collected in a "base year," during which applications are taken. After 3 or 4 years, applications must be taken again to establish new base-year data, unless the district provides evidence that local conditions have not changed.

A special provision that does not require applications to be taken every few years would reduce burden, be more attractive to school districts, and potentially increase student participation by expanding access to free meals. To support the development of such a provision, the Food and Nutrition Service asked the National Academies to study the technical and operational issues that arise in using data from the American Community Survey (ACS)--a new continuous survey replacing the long-form survey of the decennial census--to obtain estimates of students who are eligible for free and reduced-price meals for schools and school districts. Such estimates would be used to develop "claiming percentages" that, if sufficiently accurate, would determine federal reimbursements to districts for the schools that provide free meals to all students under a new special provision that eliminates the base-year requirements of current provisions.

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