Schools, Neighborhoods, and Universal Breakfast Programs: Examining the Relationship between Universal Breakfast Programs and End-of-Grade Test Pass Rates in North Carolina Public Schools

The significance of eating breakfast and the potential relationship to improved cognitive abilities and enhanced learning among students has become a topic of increased discussion in recent years. This issue has gained importance as student performance has become increasingly tied to standardized test results, which may influence funding, rankings, and the perception of the school’s success. Within this larger discussion, research regarding the correlation between the implementation of a universal breakfast program provided daily by the school system to all students, regardless of household income, and student academic performance has been limited, particularly in the state of North Carolina. This paper presents an initial overview of the effects of the Universal Breakfast Program at the school level between the 2010-11 and 2011-12 school years. School breakfast programs were created to meet the needs of hungry children and thereby hopefully improve their overall health and academic performance. In recent years, universal breakfast programs have become increasingly popular in an attempt to reduce some of the social stigmas associated with eating free or reduced priced meals. This report provides an evaluation at the school level—not the individual level—of the impacts of the first year in the universal breakfast pilot program in selected elementary and middle schools in North Carolina on academic achievement. While every school in this study participates in the federal School Breakfast Program, only 32 schools participated in a Universal Breakfast Program during the 2011-12 school year.Master of City and Regional Plannin