- Denial of Provisional Accreditation or Initial Accreditation – a program applying for provisional accreditation or initial accreditation may have their application denied. If a program is denied provisional or initial accreditation, the Commission shall identify the specific issues that prevented the granting of the application. This action requires a program to notify students in writing of the denial within 7 business days, with a copy of the notice to the Commission.
- Emergency Suspension of a Program’s Provisional Accreditation/Accredited Member Status – In rare instances where there is significant concern for the safety of students, the Accreditation Commission may issue an Emergency Suspension for a period of 14 calendar days, during which a program must pause all activity and may not recruit or enroll additional students. Due to the nature of the emergency suspension, this may not be appealed.
- The Emergency Suspension will:
- Identify the causes/concerns that led to the emergency suspension
- Requires a program to notify students in writing of the suspension within 7 business days, with a copy of the notice to the Commission
- Specify corrective action(s) and conditions to be met for the lifting of the emergency suspension
- At the conclusion of the time period, the Commission will either:
- Lift the emergency suspension and allow the program to resume regular operations
- Initiate an extended suspension process (see below)
- Suspend Provisional Accreditation/Accredited Member Status – requires the program to temporarily stop recruiting and enrolling students pending further action.
- Suspension may be for up to 18 months.
- Action to suspend:
- Identifies areas of non-compliance issues leading to the suspension.
- Specifies the effective date of suspension.
- Requires a program to notify students in writing of suspension within 7 business days, with a copy of the notice to the Commission.
- Ordinarily permits completion of program units in progress at the time; no new students may be enrolled.
- Requires the program to stop publication/distribution of materials about its program.
- Requires the program to suspend recruitment and admissions.
- Prohibits the expansion of programming or development.
- Specifies corrective action(s) and conditions to be met for removal of suspension.
- When the suspension period ends the Commission:
- Removes the suspension or
- Withdraws the program’s accreditation.
- Withdraw Provisional/Accredited Member Status – This action ends the program’s accredited standing with ACPE and may occur:
- By an adverse action of the commission if the program is not in compliance with ACPE accreditation standards;
- By an adverse action of commission after the program in suspension, fail(s) to meet conditions for removal of suspension. Programs under suspension may not vacate adverse action by initiating voluntary withdrawal of membership;
- When a program has been without an ACPE Certified Educator for 24 months.
- By request of the accredited program. Accredited programs in good standing may request withdrawal of Accredited Member status or accreditation of any programs by written notification. Voluntary requests are noted at the next regular Commission meeting.
- Any withdrawal of Provisional/Accredited Member Status requires a program to notify students in writing of the adverse action within 7 business days, with a copy of the notice to the Commission.
- When finances may have an impact on the decision of the Commission, the program may seek review of new financial information before an adverse action decision is finalized, if all the following conditions are met:
- The financial information was unavailable to the program until after the decision subject to appeal was made.
- The financial information is significant and bears materially on the financial deficiencies identified by the Commission. The Accreditation Commission determines the significance and materiality.
- The only remaining area of non-compliance cited by the Commission in support of a final adverse action decision is the program’s failure to meet the ACPE standard pertaining to finances.
A program may seek review of new financial information as described only once and any determination made by the Commission does not provide a basis for an appeal.