Over the years, there have been various small controversies, the most infamous being the scandal involving the Steinmetz High School team, which was caught cheating at the 1995 Illinois state finals.

[3] Academic Decathlon has been criticized by educators for the amount of time it requires students to spend on the material, as it constitutes an entire curriculum beyond the one provided by the school.

[4] Around the turn of the millennium, several coaches protested the USAD's decision to publish error-ridden Resource Guides rather than provide topics for students to research.

[14] In 1971, when the grand jury recommended that the Orange County Department of Education should no longer play a part in the competition, full control was handed over to the OCAD.

[17][18] Peterson, inspired by the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, hoped to make Academic Decathlon an international event.

Prior to that season, students had performed their own research for each event, and test writers did not have to base their questions on material USAD published.

Though the events finally stabilized during the 2000–01 season, the USAD administration changed dramatically that year when the program's executive director, James Alvino, resigned.

His critics and the USAD Board regarded the inclusion as a conflict of interest, as the material was a persuasive essay that heavily pushed Alvino's point of view.

[36] The season was also significant in that it was the first year that states were allowed to send both their large and small school champions to the national competition.

[85] The United States Academic Decathlon publishes a variety of study materials for the objective events, the profits from which support the program.

An art reproduction booklet and music CD contain a particular year's relevant pieces and are issued separately from the Resource Guides.

[88] Resource Guides are offered for the art, economics, language and literature, music, science/social science, and Super Quiz events.

A large part of the guide focused on information about that year's composers: Beethoven, Berlioz, Rossini, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Verdi, Mussorgsky, Wagner, Bizet, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Mahler and Strauss.

The Art Resource Guide included sections detailing the lives and works of relevant artists such as Joseph Mallord William Turner, Claude Monet, Albert Bierstadt, and Camille Pissarro.

Two of the major ones were Acalon Cards and Exams and DemiDec, formed by former coach Dan Spetner[91] and former Decathlete[92] Daniel Berdichevsky,[93] respectively.

[98] In 2000, several coaches who had led their teams to Nationals during the 1990s resigned in protest over Academic Decathlon's decision to sell nearly $1,000 of study materials rather than simply providing topics for students to independently research.

[5][6] Richard Golenko, coach of the 1996 J. Frank Dobie High School team that won the national competition, said that the decision to market guides shifted Academic Decathlon's emphasis to memorization over critical thinking.

James Alvino, USAD's executive director at that time, argued that the expensive study materials were necessary to continue funding nearly 75% of the program's $1,750,000 operating budget and to provide a fairer playing field for less wealthy schools, but did acknowledge that USAD would attempt to reduce prices, remove the more trivial questions, and base smaller portions of the tests on the official Resource Guide.

[88] The National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) has criticized the intense amount of studying required by students as "excess fact-mongering".

In the 1980s, the Association did not endorse Academic Decathlon, citing what it believes was an excessive amount of time involved with the studying necessary to win.

Depending on the state director, the relay component of Super Quiz contained either 5 or 10 questions, each worth 80 or 40 points respectively.

[107] The medals' design is the "AD" portion of the official USAD logo, encircled by "United States" at the top, "Academic Decathlon" at the bottom, and four stars of increasing size on either side.

The current highest individual score is 9,707.9, achieved by Hannah Lee from Wakeland High School at the 2019 Texas state competition.

The cheating allowed Steinmetz to beat perennial powerhouse Whitney Young Magnet High School, who had won the Illinois state finals in 22 of the previous 23 years.

Six of the twelve students in the nation who scored over 900 points on the math test came from Steinmetz High School, prompting the Illinois state Academic Decathlon to suspect cheating.

[3] Catholic Memorial High School coach John Burke was at the center of a dispute over the results of the 2003 Wisconsin state final.

He was well within his rights to contest the score; however, Gerhard Fischer, President of Wisconsin Academic Decathlon, said that the way Burke handled the appeal was "highly questionable" and inflammatory.

[122] The Wisconsin Academic Decathlon Board discovered that Burke had previously been accused of "[m]ore than a year of repeated 'attacks' on another school's pupils, including allegations of cheating on tests and ineligibility.

Coached by Sean Canfield, the team has won both the California and National Small School titles for the past 6 years.

UHS has a current enrollment of 465 students, yet placed eighth overall at the 2013 California State, competing against schools several times its size.