Project CLASS, which stands for Children Learning Appropriate Social Skills, is a set of program initiatives started in 1997 by Houston Achievement Place. Houston Achievement Place (HAP), established in 1974, is a non-profit social service agency providing training, school-focused programs and residential services.

HAP is a nationally Certified Teaching-Family Training Site, and is one of only 24 Certified Training Sites in the United States and Canada. The Teaching-Family Model utilized by HAP is one of the nation’s most thoroughly tested, intensively researched and widely recognized training and service approaches. The Teaching-Family Model is effectively helping many thousands of children in numerous communities throughout North America.

The early roots of HAP go back to the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, and the Achievement Place Research Project. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) provided significant early funding for the Achievement Place Research Project and was instrumental in practical applications of Applied Behavior Analysis.
This support and research were instrumental
in developing the Teaching-Family Model.

Project CLASS is a Training application of
the Teaching-Family Model that has benefited
tens of thousands of school children since its inception in 1997.