Education Dive Magazine took an in-depth look at the innovative partnership between the Tacoma Housing Authority (THA) and Tacoma Public Schools (TPS). The program offers housing assistance to low-income families in order to enable children to stay in their same schools from year to year, thereby stabilizing students' attendance and improving their educational outcomes.
The partnership, now known as the Elementary School Housing Assistance Program (ESHAP), began at Tacoma's McCarver Elementary School in 2011 and has since expanded to several schools in the Tacoma area. The program has helped more than 150 children stay in their schools so far. A 2017 evaluation of the program at McCarver found that students in the program experienced a 23.3% turnover rate -- significantly lower than the school district's 57% average turnover rate for elementary schools. The evaluation also showed that 68.8% of the program's students were reading at grade level, up from 35.8% at the program's inception.
Read Education Dive's article to learn about the history, evolution, and future of THA and TPS's impactful program.
CLPHA's Housing Is Initiative's 2018 publication "Up and Down the I-5 Corridor: How Housing Authorities in the Pacific-Northwest Created a Regional Collaboration to Further Housing-Education Efforts," funded by the MacArthur Foundation, discussed THA and TPS's innovative McCarver Elementary School program and outlined elements of successful partnerships between housing authorities, local school districts, and other regional partners. Click here to read the publication.