WHO WE ARE
WHAT WE DO
ACE is an innovative, competency-based program at Brookline High School for up to 48 students, entering grades 10-12, who feel they will find more intellectual satisfaction and be more academically successful in a non-traditional setting. ACE provides a rigorous college-preparation pathway in which students are placed in multi-age classes based on their skill levels and can go at their own pace and graduate when they complete their content and skill competencies.
HOW DOES ACE WORK?
ACE students take all of their core academic subjects including English, Math, History and Science in the program while still taking their electives, world language, and health and fitness classes in mainstream. In their ACE classes, students get the chance to experience engaging, experiential learning that takes thematic topics and explores them in great depth – often culminating in performance-based assessments.
Competency-Based Education
The primary and the crucial difference between a competency-based system of teaching and assessment and a traditional model, is that students begin a learning pathway based on assessed skill level in each content area, and not on arbitrary placement in grades (based on age). Each content area (i.e. English, History, Math, and Science) is divided into 6 week courses. After being assessed for their knowledge in each content area, students are placed into two courses at a time that put them at their "learning edge" i.e. challenging, but not overwhelming. Students progress from course to course in each content area, based on their ability to demonstrate mastery in each area, independently and multiple times. Once they meet the assigned benchmarks in each course, they become "competent", and move on to the next course. If they finish a trimester without demonstrating competency in an area, they do not fail. Instead, they repeat that course when it is offered next. For more information about competency based education, please see go to the "Helpful Information" tab.
HOW DO WE KNOW IT WORKS?
Participation in the ACE program has created measurable results for students. In only one year, new students who joined ACE demonstrate a reduced number of unexcused absences in all subject areas and a dramatic increase in the number of A's and B's earned in their first year of ACE compared to the year previous year in mainstream. See below.
