sentences:  Avery Coonley third group students "won highest honors in the WordMasters Challenge, a national language arts competition" in 2007, placing eighth in the nation out of more than 200 teams.Controversy erupted in 1994, when ACS won the Illinois State Science Fair team competition for the fourth year in a row, prompting the IJAS "to banish the school from team competition for [the] next year, on the grounds that their students were 'just too good.The incident attracted national attention and was decried as an example of the "dumbing down" of education and the victory of self-esteem over excellence in schools.