Schools are the bedrock of education and must be well-equipped to face 21st century challenges and keep students their highest priority. The undeniable power of education to bring positive social impact has been the underlying principle of ACCEL Schools. Honored by The CEO Views with the ‘Thought Leadership Award of 2025’, CEO Ron Packard sat down with us to share ACCEL’s decade-long journey to success.
Take us through your entrepreneurial journey! What sparked your interest in this space?
I was attracted to education because of the opportunity to have a positive effect on society. When I started in the space over 25 years ago, it was obvious that technology would improve education in a significant way and that the Internet would be able to improve it dramatically. For teachers, the Internet meant more tools to engage students and to track progress. For students, it meant more flexibility in how they learn and more engaging content. A career in education meant figuring out how to have a positive impact on as many kids as possible and do it in a more efficient way.
How has your company evolved and made an impact over the years?
For the past ten years, we have grown dramatically at an average rate of over 20% per year. We started by serving less than 500 students in the first year, and today, we serve over 55,500 students in multiple learning formats at 198 schools in 23 states and in six countries.
Not only have we grown the number of brick-and-mortar K-12 schools we serve, but we have also expanded to early childhood education, online charter schools, and both government-funded and independent schools abroad.
The greatest impact we have made in our first ten years as a company has been to turn around failing schools. Sixty percent of our brick-and-mortar charter schools (and some of our online schools) came to us in financial and/or academic distress.
Our team has been successful in improving the financial and academic performance of these schools to maintain stability in the communities these schools serve. Furthermore, we have been able to make these improvements amidst the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, which have included significant K-12 learning loss, increased behavioral issues, reduced participation in foundational early learning programs, and national teaching and childcare shortages.
In some cases, the turnarounds have been astonishing. One example is a specialty bilingual school serving the largest city in Ohio. We began managing the school in the Fall of 2017 when it served 265 students and had a performance index score lower than 60 points. In the first year under our stewardship, the school experienced a 10-point growth in performance index. Despite a dip in academic achievement during the pandemic (a result consistent with schools across the US), the school quickly achieved full academic recovery while simultaneously doubling its student body.
The school was recently rated five out of five stars in student progress by the Ohio Department of Education for significantly exceeding state expectations in the amount of learning students make in one school year, a tremendous feat for a student population of 88% English Language Learners who are 100% economically disadvantaged and close to 10% unhoused.
How is ACCEL Schools transforming education and providing great learning opportunities for students?
Over 25 of the brick-and-mortar schools we manage offer a model of education that specializes in arts, bilingual, career tech, classical, early learning, sports, or all-girls leadership development while meeting the state standards for education.
In the online learning space, we have additionally developed career academies and dropout recovery school models that offer multiple pathways for students to earn high school diplomas and prepare for immediate employment.
Under the Pansophic Learning umbrella, we additionally operate the largest hybrid school in the Middle East, which serves the expat community as well as local students seeking to earn a US diploma and matriculate to US colleges and universities.
What does the Thought Leadership Award 2025 mean to you? How do you define true thought leadership?
I am honored to receive the award. As a CEO, you like to think that you are making a difference in your industry, so it is meaningful to be recognized for thought leadership.
To me, thought leadership means pioneering ways to influence purposeful change. It means solving problems and developing new processes to operate efficiently. In education, it means pushing the envelope to benefit all children. It means helping a lot of people, and it means encouraging employees to exercise their talents and leadership.
How do you embrace and implement the key aspects of thought leadership in your business?
Solving problems to help people brings me a lot of personal satisfaction. One recent example has been the development of our sports academy model. We noticed that young families struggled to coordinate their schedules to accommodate traditional education, extracurricular sports activities, and quality time as a family.
We developed a school model that focuses on core subject instruction, athletic development, and team sports competitions within the traditional school day so that families can eat dinner and spend time together each evening. We piloted the model in 2021, and its immediate popularity means we have expanded to six locations in less than four years.
You have an unparalleled professional career with a demonstrated history of working in the industry. How have your experience and expertise contributed to your leadership journey?
All your life experiences culminate in where you are today, and for me, that has meant visiting over 1,000 schools in over ten countries and on almost every continent. We have learned something from each school, which has built an incredible knowledge base across the full spectrum of education.
Being mission-driven and always keeping the big picture in view has drawn the interest of top talent in our industry. I have a core team of educators and professionals with deep expertise who have been with us for 10-20 years, some at multiple businesses.
Our strong, coherent team has driven our success and contributed to our ability to move quickly and build credibility in the industry in a way that opens a lot of doors for us and for our students.
Shed some light on the thoughtful services that ACCEL Schools offers to empower education.
We offer a fully integrated school management platform that includes everything needed to operate or open a school anywhere in the world. A key component is AMP for Education, a proprietary ecosystem of technology, tools, curriculum, and data analysis that provides a layer of consistency in managing an effective school and differentiating instruction for each student. AMP supports everything from enrollment to compliance, communication, collaboration, classroom instruction, and much more.
Currently, innovation has become more of a need. What is innovation to you? Being an innovator yourself, how do you drive innovation?
In the past couple of years, we have seen a significant uptick in the pace of technological advancement. Technology like AI will have a big, if not a bigger effect, on education than the Internet had on education 25 years ago.
I am massively intrigued and will be striving to figure out what this will look like in every aspect of our business—helping teachers improve instruction, helping students get answers more quickly, improving our service to customers, and more.
What do you envision the future holding in the field of education? Looking into the future, what would be the best manifestation of your current presence in the field?
In the future, we will see a further breakdown of traditional education as technology gets applied to further specialize and individualize student learning. The best manifestation will be to see a lot of the things we are doing today become commonplace in every school.
What are your advice and tips for emerging thought leaders?
Never rest on your laurels. Constantly think every day and throughout the entire day about how the world can be better, how your business can be better, and how you can serve your customers better.
