Original Research by School Decision on Atascadero Choices in Education Academy (ace)
Atascadero Choices in Education Academy (ACE) is an alternative high school serving grades 9 through 12 within the Atascadero Unified School District. The school enrolls a small student body distributed fairly evenly across the upper grades, with slightly larger cohorts in grades 10 and 11. About two in five students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The enrollment is predominantly white, with a notable Hispanic population, a small Asian contingent, and very few students from other racial or ethnic groups.
ACE operates as a non-charter alternative school. No data on Title I status, special education enrollment, English learner count, or staff size was available. The school has no public website listed in the available records, which limits the picture a parent can form of its specific programming, daily structure, or enrollment process without direct outreach to the school itself.
On state assessments administered in the most recent school year, ACE students show below-average performance across tested subjects. In English language arts, about four in ten students demonstrated proficiency or above. Mathematics proficiency fell substantially lower, with about one in six meeting the standard. Science proficiency stood at just above one in three. These results place the school markedly below the midpoint among districts in San Luis Obispo County on overall proficiency. The school reported only one year of testing data, so trend information is not available; a parent may want to ask the school directly about historical performance and whether recent years show stability, improvement, or further decline.
No graduation rate was reported in the data, likely because the school is an alternative program that may operate on a non-traditional timeline or serve students with varied educational goals beyond a standard four-year sequence. This is a material gap for a parent trying to assess college and career readiness outcomes. Chronic absenteeism data, another marker of engagement and completion, was also absent.
Atascadero itself is a mid-sized residential community with a master-planned heritage, originally laid out as a utopian "Colony." The character is rural and suburban in tone, with an emphasis on single-family homes on larger lots where residents often keep animals. The historic downtown is walkable and anchored by the Sunken Gardens, with locally owned restaurants, shops, and a recently completed streetscape project on El Camino Real that narrowed the former highway to add parking, bike lanes, and trees. Outside downtown, the city remains auto-oriented. Schools including Atascadero High School sit on a separate campus removed from the downtown blocks, though within a short distance.
The town is in an active growth phase driven by state housing mandates, with several mixed-use residential and commercial developments under way and affordable housing projects advancing. This growth strains local water and city services but also reflects economic confidence and demographic expansion that may affect school enrollment and the character of peer groups over time.
The Atascadero Unified School District approved a major school facilities bond, Measure B-24, in November 2024, authorizing funding for renovations of vocational and career technical labs, expanded STEAM and robotics classrooms, and repairs to buildings across the district. This represents a meaningful capital investment and adds an ongoing property tax cost for families in the district. An earlier facilities bond, Measure C-20, had failed in 2020, so the approval of Measure B-24 signals renewed commitment to infrastructure after a multi-year gap.
A parent considering ACE should recognize it as a small alternative school with notably low proficiency outcomes on state tests. The absence of a public website, graduation rate data, and detailed enrollment or support-program information means much more direct inquiry with the school would be needed to understand what population it serves, what its pedagogy or daily structure looks like, and what support systems or alternative pathways it offers. The school may serve students pursuing non-traditional routes, students who have struggled in traditional settings, or students with particular needs, but this cannot be confirmed from the data available. A visit and conversation with school leadership would be essential before enrollment.
See more original research from School Decision →