Accelerated Christian Education

Accelerated Christian Education
Motto	Reaching the world for Christ, one child at a time
Formation	1970
Type	Christian Education
Headquarters	Nashville, Tennessee
Membership	Worldwide
Official languages	English, Spanish
Website	aceministries.com

Accelerated Christian Education is an American educational products company which produces the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) school curriculum. The home office is in Nashville, Tennessee, with a customer service and distribution center in Lewisville, Texas. According to a study, by 1980 there were over 3,000 Christian Schools in the United States associated with ACE. A European representative states that the ACE program is “being used in thousands of schools and many thousands of home schools in over 100 different countries worldwide.” ACE currently serves over 7,000 schools, one government contract.

It is an ideologically Christian fundamentalist program.^{[citation needed]} It lists its principles in a "statement of faith" which declares the belief that the Bible is literally true, in trinitarianism, redemptive theology and evangelism.

History

Accelerated Christian Education was founded in 1970 by Dr. Donald Howard and his wife Esther. They set about developing a biblically literalist educational curriculum that was adopted by a number of private Christian schools. He traveled extensively to promote ACE schools, viewing the establishment of ACE schools around the world as a new form of missions — he called it educational missions. According to information on the Accelerated Christian Education website, the Howards opened the first school to use the ACE program in Garland, Texas. They started with 45 students. By 1971, they had added six new schools.

Curriculum

ACE provides annual one-day training sessions for administrators. These are provided in locations around the United States. The sessions focus on understanding and properly implementing the ACE program. For Learning Center Supervisors a four-day workshop is provided annually. The workshop is organized like an ACE classroom, allowing the supervisor to experience the ACE system as a student and learn how to implement the system. According to the curriculum section on its website, the ACE “program is individualized and nongraded” and “designed to allow students to work at their own level of achievement”. ACE states that its “core curriculum is an individualized, Biblically-based, character-building curriculum package”. The material for the classes has an emphasis reflecting the Christian ideas and principles of the company. The program allows students to advance through high school. The Accelerated Christian Education curriculum is based on a series of workbooks called PACEs (Packets of Accelerated Christian Education). Each subject has 12 PACEs per grade level. The basic subjects of ACE are mathematics, English, science, social studies and word building (spelling and word usage). Test keys are published for corresponding PACEs.

A new student starting the ACE system is given a placement test, which assesses ability in the five areas with corresponding subjects. The test results then place the student at appropriate levels by subject. Students are required to set daily goals for work completion and are generally expected to finish a given PACE within three weeks. Students are given reviews at certain points in a PACE and a test at its culmination. The passing score for the test is 80% correct. Students who fail must retake the PACE until they pass.

Use

The program is used by homeschooling families and private schools. The company provides instruction and structure for operating a "Christian school". Schools are not required to use the entire ACE curriculum and may augment it with other resources.

Student conventions

Schools that use the ACE curriculum may participate in the student conventions. Since 1976, regional conventions have been held throughout the world^{[citation needed]} and the top-placed participants are able to proceed to the International Convention. The International Convention is usually held at a university campus, such as Indiana University in Bloomington (1990), North Texas University in Denton (1991), Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff (1993), Purdue University in Indiana (1994). One of the national conventions is the All Africa Student Convention that takes place in South Africa once a year at the end of November or the beginning of December. The All Africa Student Convention is hosted at the University of the Freestate in Bloemfontein.

ACE holds an annual International Student Convention, for high school students, designed to develop leadership skills. The conventions augment the curriculum by requiring students to prepare to compete in dramatic, artistic and athletic events. The conventions also offer "Events of the Heart" which allows students with mental and physical disabilities to participate. When the conventions first started, a parade in the hosting city would accompany it. In 1981, over 3,000 students and sponsors marched in New York City to celebrate the opening of the convention at Rutgers University. Student conventions offer speakers. Past speakers have been David Gibbs from the Christian Law Association, Ben Jordan and William Murray (Madalyn Murray O'Hair's son).

Criticism

Many aspects of the Accelerated Christian Education curriculum have come under criticism from education researchers, with arguments ranging from general concerns with religious fundamentalism in education to issues with political correctness and concern regarding the education value of the PACE system.

• D. Flemming and T Hunt of the education journal Phi Delta Kappa wrote in a 1987 article regarding the emphasis on rote learning.

"If parents want their children to obtain a very limited and sometimes inaccurate view of the world — one that ignores thinking above the level of rote recall — then the ACE materials do the job very well. The world of the ACE materials is quite a different one from that of scholarship and critical thinking."

• Former president of the Division of Educational Psychology for the American Psychological Association and former president of the American Educational Research Association, David Berliner, cites a study by Speck and Prideaux (1993) that notes the wide use of association and recall activities in the ACE curriculum, as well as other workbook-based curricula.

Speck and Prideau (1993) state, "The work consists of low-level cognitive tasks that emphasize simple association and recall activities, as is typical of instruction from workbooks. Despite the reviling of B. F. Skinner by the Christian Right, the materials make heavy use of behavioral objectives, programmed learning, and rewards."

• Having researched comparative performance on the ACT between public school students from one school and ACE students from another, private school in the same geographic area, one college student wrote in her thesis in 2005,

"a significant difference was found between the public school graduates' scores and the ACE graduates' scores in all areas of the ACT (English, Math, Reading, and Composite Score), except the area of Science Reasoning. Overall, the ACT scores of the ACE graduates were consistently lower than those of the public school students."

• In the past, ACE has included controversial material in its curriculum. For example, a section from a high school packet regarding apartheid in South Africa states:

"Although apartheid appears to allow the unfair treatment of blacks, the system has worked well in South Africa .... Although white businessmen and developers are guilty of some unfair treatment of blacks, they turned South Africa into a modern industrialized nation, which the poor, uneducated blacks couldn't have accomplished in several more decades. If more blacks were suddenly given control of the nation, its economy and business, as Mandela wished, they could have destroyed what they have waited and worked so hard for."

See also

• Totara College of Accelerated Learning
• Cavite Bible Baptist Academy
• Shekinah Christian Training Center
• L.I.G.H.T. Christian Academy

External links

• Accelerated Christian Education Official Website
• American Home School and Tutoring Centers A.C.E. Correspondence and Tutoring
• Christian Education Europe A.C.E. Europe Representative
• Educational Psychology Meets the Christian Right: Differing Views of Children, Schooling, Teaching, and Learning by David C. Berliner