Pflugerville Academic And Career Education (Pace)

Pflugerville Academic And Career Education (PACE) is a small alternative high school in the Pflugerville Independent School District (Isd), serving just 101 students in grades 9-12, and is designed for students who have not found success in a traditional high school setting.

PACE is fundamentally different from the area's comprehensive high schools, such as Hendrickson High School and Weiss High School, which each serve nearly 2,000 students. The most striking difference is the dropout rate: PACE's rate of 14.6% is nearly 10 times higher than the district average of 1.5% and far exceeds the rates at nearby traditional schools, which are all below 1.5%. Academic performance is also critically low, with STAAR EOC proficiency rates dramatically lower than every other school in the district. For example, in Biology, only 12.5% of PACE students were proficient, compared to 86.56% at Hendrickson. However, it is important to note that PACE's performance is not an outlier when compared to other alternative schools like Premier High School-Austin Wells Branch, which shows a similar pattern of very low proficiency and high dropout rates.

Despite these challenges, the data reveals a narrative of cautious optimism. Over the last three years, PACE has shown consistent, slight improvement in several areas, including its statewide rank (from the 5th to the 10th percentile) and test scores in Algebra I, Biology, and English I Reading. The most dramatic improvement is seen in the English Language Learner subgroup, whose ranking jumped from the 3rd to the 46th percentile. Additionally, U.S. History is consistently the strongest subject, with 46.43% of students proficient in 2025-2026. This suggests that targeted interventions may be starting to yield positive results, and the school's success should be measured against its own past performance and similar alternative schools, where it appears to be making slow but meaningful progress.