Background: The No Child Left Behind Act legislation requires both higher standards and higher success rates at the same time. Failure of students to learn to read adequately as shown by national and state test results and the need for continued school success had prompted education officials to implement two reading programs--Voyager Universal Literacy (VUL) and Harcourt Trophies (HT). Purpose: The purpose for this study was to determine if any significant (p [less than or equal to] 0.05) differences existed between the reading comprehension performances of third-grade students using VUL and third-grade students using HT. Setting: One large suburban school system in the Southeast United States. Subjects: 465 third-grade students in five schools and 601 third-grade students in five schools. Treatment: Students in five schools participated in VUL, and students in five schools participated in HT. Design: Non-experimental cross-sectional quantitative study. Method: Archived data normally collected at the district were organized and analyzed. Data Collection and Analysis: State and national test data, data on gender, data on schools matched on socioeconomic status (SES) and students with disabilities (SWD) were used. Independent samples t-tests, ANOVA, ANCOVA and effect sizes were obtained using SPSS software. Results: An effect size of 0.21 for CRCT indicated that students who received VUL improved about 0.2 standard deviation (SD) units more than did students who received HT. Implications: Study results provided information to assist school administrators in choosing programs shown to be effective in developing proficient readers and increasing reading proficiency for students in NCLB SES and SWD subgroups. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]