§200.89. Re-interviewing; eligibility documentation; and quality control. — Inbound Citations

(C) An acknowledgement that the Secretary may adjust the child counts for 2000-2001 and subsequent years downward based on the defect rate that the Secretary accepts;

(i) For every migratory child for whom an SEA approves a new Certificate of Eligibility under § 200.89(c) after the effective date of these regulations—

(A) An SEA must collect and submit to MSIX the MDEs described in paragraph (b)(1)(i) of this section within 10 working days of approving a new Certificate of Eligibility for the migratory child. The SEA is not required to collect and submit MDEs in existence before its approval of a new Certificate of Eligibility for the child except as provided in paragraph (b)(3)(i)(B) of this section; and

(B) An SEA that approves a new Certificate of Eligibility for a secondary school-aged migratory child must also—

(1) Collect and submit to MSIX within 10 working days of approving a new Certificate of Eligibility for the child MDEs from the most recent secondary school in that State attended previously by the migratory child; and

(2) Notify MSIX within 30 calendar days if one of its local operating agencies obtains records from a secondary school attended previously in another State by the migratory child.

(2) As part of the system of quality controls identified in paragraph (d) of this section, an SEA that receives MEP funds must annually validate child eligibility determinations from the current performance reporting period (September 1 to August 31) through re-interviews for a randomly selected sample of children identified as migratory during the same performance reporting period. In conducting these re-interviews, an SEA must—

(i) Except as specified in paragraphs (b)(2)(i)(A) and (B) of this section, use one or more re-interviewers who may be SEA or local operating agency staff members working to administer or operate the State MEP, or any other person trained to conduct personal interviews and to understand and apply program eligibility requirements, but who did not work on the initial eligibility determinations being tested;

(A) At least once every three years until September 1, 2020, SEAs must use one or more independent re-interviewers (i.e., interviewers who are neither SEA nor local operating agency staff members working to administer or operate the State MEP nor any other persons who worked on the initial eligibility determinations being tested and who are trained to conduct personal interviews and to understand and apply program eligibility requirements).

(B) Beginning September 1, 2020, an SEA must use one or more independent re-interviewers to validate child eligibility determinations made during one of the first three full performance reporting periods (September 1 through August 31) following the effective date of a major statutory or regulatory change that directly impacts child eligibility (as determined by the Secretary). Therefore, the entire sample of eligibility determinations to be tested by independent re-interviewers must be drawn from children determined to be eligible in a single performance period, based on eligibility requirements that include the major statutory or regulatory change.

(ii) Select a random sample of identified migratory children so that a sufficient number of eligibility determinations in the current performance reporting period are tested on a statewide basis or within categories associated with identified risk factors (e.g., experience of recruiters, size or growth in local migratory child population, effectiveness of local quality control procedures) in order to help identify possible problems with the State's child eligibility determinations;

(iii) States must use a face-to-face approach to conduct these re-interviews unless circumstances make face-to-face re-interviews impractical and necessitate the use of an alternative method such as telephone re-interviewing;

(iv) Determine and document in writing whether the child eligibility determination and the information on which the determination was based were true and correct;

(v) Stop serving any children found not to be eligible and remove them from the data base used to compile counts of eligible children;

(vi) Certify and report to the Department the results of re-interviewing in the SEA's annual report of the number of migratory children in the State required by the Secretary; and

(vii) Implement corrective actions or improvements to address the problems identified by the State (including the identification and removal of other ineligible children in the total population), and any corrective actions, including retrospective re-interviewing, required by the Secretary.