You'll lose half your eighth grade and a third of your seventh grade if you're lucky - and then it'll severely limit schedule flexibility for sixth grade as well.
One of my feeders has had ACE for five years. The program was a consistent borderline second division program for years and was trending upward. This is at an inner-city MS with no lessons in a highly competitive region. The first year of ACE, they dropped to a 3 on stage and a 3 in SR. The second year, 4 and 3. The third year, 4 and 4. Now they're not even able to put together a viable ensemble.
It's not the teacher, either - the person leading that program had been there for five years *before* ACE was implemented. It killed their band. They can't get kids in the classes they need, they can't keep kids enrolled, and the admin is 100% about bumping test scores over everything else.
YMMV.
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