SGER: The Effects of Severe Flooding on the Educational Development of Public School Students

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Research on student educational performance and careers has a long and distinguished history in American social and behavioral science, but research on the social consequences of disasters and catastrophic risk have been far less frequent. The devastating floods in Eastern Iowa in June 2008 provide an opportunity to assess the effects of students' flood experiences on their subsequent educational development and careers. The investigators had previously been working under contract to the Cedar Rapids Community School District to develop a model of the changing geographical patterns of students attending its schools for the purpose of reorganizing their school attendance policies and areas served. When unexpected flooding from the Cedar River that was 11 feet (3.3 m) higher than in any previously recorded flood event in the area submerged some residences not even included in the 500-year flood maps for the city, tens of thousands of residents were displaced. Based on previously collected data, the investigators were able to determine that 1,834 students lived in neighborhoods that encountered flooding. This Small Grant for Exploratory Research will enable these investigators to conduct research that is grounded in social scientific theories of educational performance and disaster aftermath that focus on disrupted and reconstituted network ties as key components of successful recovery. The investigators will conduct a longitudinal survey of fourth-grade through eighth-grade grade student families in the flood zone (676 students from approximately 420 families) and track students and families who remain in the larger Cedar Rapids community and those who left it. Affected students will be paired with a control group of non-flood affected students of similar race and ethnicity, family income status, grade in school, and school attended in 2008-2009 in an attempt to assess the distinctive effects of flood victimization on family life and educational performance.This project will systematically assess the longitudinal effects of a natural disaster on the educational performance of youth using and integrating prevailing social scientific theories of educational development and community responses to disaster. Project results should permit comparisons to be made with research conducted in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the more limited research program of those who studied the aftermath of the 1997 flood in Grand Forks, North Dakota. The data from this project should allow the larger research community to engage in more sophisticated analyses of natural disaster impacts on youth and families, because flood-affected students and families will be systematically compared with similar control groups of students and families unaffected by the flood. Enhanced understanding of community and individual responses to disasters like the Cedar Rapids flood will be increasingly valuable for policy makers, planners, and other community leaders as they try to prepare for major catastrophes.