Iowa State University

The Three-City Teacher Survey (TCTS) is a vital new part of our research program, called Welfare, Children, and Families:  A Three-City Study. Please visit www.jhu.edu/~welfare for more information on our main study. This major new investigation, the Three-City Teacher Survey (TCTS), supplements the assessment of economic, academic, and social competencies among low-income, urban children and adolescents who face multiple family and community risks. Using bioecological, economic, and stage-environment fit theories, we seek to explicate the individual, family, and school characteristics and processes that support healthy developmental trajectories and school success among disadvantaged urban children and adolescents.

The TCTS is a web-based survey of teachers who serve the children and adolescents of the Three-City Study. The TCTS will collect information regarding children's academic achievement and school problems as well as information about the children's schooling experiences. The TCTS provides exceptional information on school environments and school success among low-income children and youth, gathered through (1) interviews during the spring of 2005 with the teachers of focal children and youth and (2) acquisition of students' school records and test scores.

The TCTS is led at Iowa State University by Dr. Brenda Lohman an Associate Investigator with Welfare, Children, and Families:  A Three-City Study (www.jhu.edu/~welfare). 

Co-Investigators of the TCTS

Brenda J. Lohman, Ph.D., Iowa State University

P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, Ph.D., Northwestern University

Rebekah Levine Coley, Boston College

Jennifer Matjasko, University of Texas at Austin

TCTS Support Staff

Project Manager:

      Shelby Kaura, Ph.D. (2005 - present)

Computer Support

      John R. Clark III

Graduate Students/Postdoctoral Fellows::      

      Iowa State University:

Shelby Kaura (2003 - 2005)
Tina Jordahl (2004 - present)
Natalie Lonsdale (2004 - 2006)
Melissa Schnurr (2005 - present)
Emily Worthington (2006 - present)

Northwestern University: 

      Katarina Gutmannova

      Natalia Palacios

      Angela Valdovinos

      Boston College

            Elyse Pratt

            Holly Schindler

            Bethany Medieros

      University of Texas at Austin

            Natalie Ammon

TCTS Funders

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the following organizations:

• The Annie E. Casey Foundation

• The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)

• The Searle Fund for Policy Research

The project, which has become known as the Three-City Study (and is formally titled Welfare, Children, and Families: A Three-City Study (www.jhu.edu/~welfare), was designed to examine the experiences of children, families, and communities in the wake of welfare reform. The 1996 welfare reform law, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), is considered one of the major alterations to social policy in the past century, and has led to substantial changes in the lives of low-income families. Between 1996 and 2001, the welfare rolls fell dramatically, and the labor force participation rate of low-income mothers rose sharply. Studies of children and adolescents, although raising some concerns, have not found the severe declines in well-being that many feared. However, the longer-term repercussions of the changes, as time limits have taken effect and the macroeconomic conditions in the U.S. have declined, are not yet known. The Three-City Study is not an explicit evaluation of welfare reform policy. Rather it is an intensive, multi-method assessment of children's developmental trajectories, mothers' experiences, and family and community environments in the populations to whom welfare reform was directed. In this vein, we assessed a representative sample of low-income children in the three cities to include all families at-risk of being influenced by welfare reform policies. A wealth of information from multiple interviews and assessments was collected in two waves, in 1999 and again in 2000-01.

The multimethod, multidisciplinary, multimillion dollar Three- City Study began in 1999 to assess the well-being of children and families in the wake of welfare reform. This research project is an intensive study of 2400 families in Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio and is comprised of three interrelated components: longitudinal surveys, embedded observational developmental studies, and contextual, comparative ethnographic studies. All families have a child who was age 0 to 4 or age 10 to 14 at the time of the first interview. All interviews were conducted in person. The main interview, which took about 2.5 hours, consisted of two sections: first, an interview with the primary caregiver (usually the mother) of a child in the household; and second, an interview with the child him/herself (except for very young children). Forty percent of the families interviewed were receiving cash welfare payments at the time of the interview.  Two interviews were completed in 1999 and 2001.

We have recently been awarded a research grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) that will fund a third wave of home-based interviews to begin in February 2005. Half of the children in the sample ranged in age from infancy to 4 years at wave 1 in 1999, and they will have transitioned into elementary school (ages 6-10) at the time of the third wave of data collection in 2005. The other half consisted of young adolescents, 10 to 14 years of age in 1999. They will have made the transition to high school, or they will have graduated or dropped out (ages 16-20) and are now making the transition to young adulthood.

By combining the new TCTS data with school academic records as well as extensive in-home interviews and direct assessments of youth from three rounds of the Three-City Study, we will have an exceptionally rich and comprehensive data set on determinants of successful youth adaptation among a large, representative sample of low-income urban children and adolescents who are experiencing welfare reform in a restricted economic environment.

We gratefully acknowledge our funders for the Three-City Study:

• Government agencies: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Planning and Evaluation, Administration on Developmental Disabilities, Administration for Children and Families, Social Security Administration, and National Institute of Mental Health.

• Foundations: The Boston Foundation, The Annie E. Casey Foundation, The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, The Lloyd A. Fry Foundation, The Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The Joyce Foundation, The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, The W.K. Kellogg Foundation, The Kronkosky Charitable Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, The Searle Fund for Policy Research, and The Woods Fund of Chicago.

• A special thank you is also extended to the families who participate in Welfare, Children, and Families: A Three-City Study.