When a program is not in compliance with a standard or policy of the Accreditation Commission, the Commission will issue a Letter of Non-Compliance to the program. The letter will include an explanation of the non-compliance, what the program needs to demonstrate to return to compliance, and a specific time frame for the program to respond to the letter, not to exceed 3 months. The Commission will review responses to areas of non-compliance at their regularly scheduled meetings and will notify programs of the outcome within 30 days of the conclusion of the meeting.
If a program does not address identified issues within three months, the Commission may grant a good cause extension under the following conditions when the program:
- is without an ACPE Certified Educator during the assigned period. The program may not admit students, continue programs in progress, or offer programs of ACPE CPE in the absence of an ACPE Certified Educator.
- hires a new Certified Educator during the specified period of the non-compliance.
- does not offer enough units to demonstrate compliance within the specified time.
Programs requesting a good cause extension must do so in writing to their assigned accreditation commissioner.
If the Commission determines that the program meets one of the above criteria, a good cause extension may be no more than three months.
If the Commission determines that the program does not meet the criteria for a good cause extension and the program does not demonstrate a full return to compliance by the deadline, the Commission will initiate an adverse action.
if a program is, in the opinion of the Commission, significantly out of compliance and student safety is a concern, the Commission may implement one of the following actions in lieu of a Letter of Non-Compliance:
- 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
- Require 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, OR
- 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 3 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
- initiates an adverse action.