Poverty has an enormous impact on children and their success in school. Children with low socioeconomic status often perform poorly in reading. Poor reading skills often lead to truancy, low rates of high school graduation, low-paying jobs, and cycles of illiteracy in generations of families. Secondary data was collected from the Tennessee Department of Education website and conducted an ANOVA quartile split to examine the impact of universal free and reduced lunch (FRL) policy changes on third grade reading normal curve equivalent (NCE) scores. Findings from this one-way ANOVA indicated there were no statistically significant differences in third grade reading NCE scores after the policy change to 100% FRL. The social implications of these findings offer the potential to raise awareness of universal FRL and its impact on reading comprehension among third grade students in the educational setting, enabling policy changes in the United States Department of Agriculture's core nutrition program for FRL to children regardless of socioeconomic status.