The benchmarks reflect the high level of fundamental intellectual demand that now is required of high school graduates who aspire to further education and training, whether graduates go directly into a career-track, high-growth, highly skilled job or into formal postsecondary study. The workplace tasks and postsecondary assignments can help students understand how the subjects they study in high school today are relevant to the challenges that await them tomorrow. Together, the benchmarks and samples exemplify — in a way that state standards alone have not — how very complex and contextual real workplace and postsecondary challenges are.

Students, parents, teachers, employers and state education officials all can use the American Diploma Project (ADP) work as an important tool for analyzing the efficacy of their current high school exit, as well as college and workplace entrance and placement, systems. ADP anticipates that:

• students and parents will compare the curriculum of their local high schools to the ADP benchmarks to determine how much of the ADP benchmark content is addressed;
• high school teachers will refer to these workplace applications to develop effective curricula and to infuse dynamic, real-world contexts into their classroom teaching;
• employers will come to value and therefore demand and use achievement data based on state standards that are aligned with these real-world expectations; and
• K–12 and postsecondary policymakers will refer to the tasks and assignments in close coordination with the benchmarks to determine how the content of their high school standards, curricula, assessments and graduation requirements compare to these real-world expectations.