ABOUT US
Our Mission—Helping to bring success to struggling learners.
Pace Learning Systems' visionary founder, Dr. John McKee, has devoted his professional life to breaking the cycle of failure and bringing success to struggling learners.
Early in his career as a psychologist, Dr. McKee began the mission of educating inmates at an Alabama correctional facility. He strongly believed that education could be their ticket out of prison and their hope of a productive life. However, he quickly discovered that most of them had failed academically and possessed negative feelings about learning. He set out to design a program that would quickly bring them learning success, believing it would motivate them to continue learning.
Dr. McKee adopted, what was at the time, an experimental method called programmed instruction and developed a highly individualized learning program that worked! His students—those who had failed with traditional instruction—were excited by their new-found academic success and were clamoring for more and different material.
After 15 years of success with his program, Dr. McKee began expanding the scope of his work beyond corrections. He founded Pace Learning Systems in 1977 to market this program as well as to develop other programs that would prevent academic failure at an earlier point in the lives of struggling learners. He wanted to target the in-school population considered to be on the verge of dropping out—those learners who are considered "unteachable," who generally test in the bottom quartile on standardized tests.
Today, Dr. McKee's mission and vision remain unchanged — and that mission and passion drive Pace Learning Systems.
The old saying, 'nothing teaches like success,'
has been my guiding principle, and I hope, my legacy.
Dr. John M. McKee
Founder,
Pace Learning Systems