Key Components of the Achieve American Diploma Project (ADP) and Their
Relevance to the Ford Partnership for Advanced Studies (Ford PAS)
The Achieve American Diploma Project (ADP) strives to address a major problem in U.S. high schools:
that earning a high school diploma does not necessarily mean that a student is prepared for higher
education and the workforce of the 21st century. To help states reform their high school requirements in
order to better prepare students, ADP has developed benchmarks in English and mathematics—
benchmarks that align high school content to postsecondary applications and needs—to which states are
encouraged to align their own standards. Among ADP’s recommendations are the following:
 Require that all students have the same curriculum requirements no matter what their plans are for
future education or employment.
 Hold high expectations for student performance and use varied measures to assess student
performance.
 Bridge the gap between high schools and postsecondary schools, as well as between education and
business.
The Ford Partnership for Advanced Studies (Ford PAS) program focuses on integrating critical 21st
century skills into a rigorous curriculum that prepares students to succeed in postsecondary education and
the workplace. The curriculum bases learning in real-world contexts and promotes partnerships between
K-12 and postsecondary education, the business sector, and the community. The objectives of Ford PAS
are closely aligned with ADP’s goals and strategies for change.
American Diploma Project Proposals
The following ADP strategies for state-level reform of high school education match defining features of
the Ford PAS program:
 “Anchor Academic Standards in the Real World” in part by “align[ing] academic standards in high
school with the knowledge and skills required for college and workplace success.”
Ford PAS content meets national academic standards in mathematics, science, English language
arts, and social studies as well as standards in business and engineering. The curriculum also aligns
to the national career cluster standards, addressing primarily the cluster criteria in academic
foundations and 21st century skills, which are common across all the clusters and their pathways.

“Require All Students to Take a Quality College and Workplace Readiness Curriculum”: Preparation
for success in both future education and the workplace requires students to learn the same rigorous
content and skills, particularly English and mathematics. Further, ADP notes, “research and
experience show that students who take a rigorous college prep curriculum in high school achieve at
higher levels and are more likely to enroll and succeed in postsecondary education.”
Ford PAS is designed to educate, motivate, and prepare young men and women to pursue
postsecondary education, enter rewarding careers, and become responsible citizens in a democratic
society. It is aligned to national academic standards, including those in English and mathematics;
connects important ideas within and across disciplines; and develops flexibility in drawing on
appropriate disciplinary knowledge and skills. Ford PAS promotes mastery of both the academic core
and 21st century knowledge and skills, including creative problem-solving and learning how to learn.
ADP also notes that curriculum can vary in quality and thus proposes “providing curriculum guides or
model curricula that illustrate the content and the ways to teach it and/or . . . creating tools that enable
local districts to align their curricula more effectively with revised state standards.”
The Ford PAS curriculum provides a model for best practices and rigorous content, and Ford PAS
professional development supports teachers in developing their skills and knowledge to teach such
content in ways that engage and motivate today’s students.
ADP proposes that states allow schools “the option of organizing the required curricular content in
different ways while keeping state standards and tests the constant.”
Achieve ADP and the Ford PAS Program

The emphasis of the Ford PAS curriculum on real-world applications of knowledge and skills does
not diminish the rigor of the content taught. Ford PAS provides an alternative to traditional course
structures in accordance with ADP’s recommendation that “states may want to be flexible about
when they give state assessments, but should require that the assessment be taken . . . ensuring that
core English and mathematics content is taught to all students.”
ADP further proposes that schools “ensure that other disciplines reinforce college and workplace
readiness expectations.”
The Ford PAS curriculum teaches knowledge and skills from within—as well as across—the
disciplines and provides teachers with opportunities to contextualize academic content in meaningful
ways.
“Measure What Matters and Make It Count”: ADP promotes alignment between high school
assessments and the needs of colleges, proposing ambitious minimal goals for performance and
multiple methods of student assessment.
Ford PAS curriculum activities address specific learning goals that correlate with national academic
standards. The curriculum requires students to apply the knowledge, skills, and understanding that
they acquire through their learning experiences to create products that demonstrate their learning.
Modules provide ways of assessing each learning goal using a variety of assessment tools, including
peer, self, and product assessments as well as quizzes and tests. Quizzes and tests pose open-ended
questions that require students to derive meaning from and articulate their new knowledge rather
than just recall and repeat facts.

“Bridge the Gap Between High School and College”
Ford PAS grounds learning in the real world in a variety of ways. Coordinated Learning Experiences
(CLEs), for example, connect students with colleges and universities as well as the business sector
and the local community. Partnerships are essential to the Ford PAS program and encourage and
facilitate development of closer ties between high schools and higher education.

Ensure that teachers are qualified to teach more rigorous courses and provide the supports teachers
need to be successful in this endeavor.
Ford PAS offers a variety of professional development opportunities that enable teachers to renew,
update, and advance their pedagogical and content knowledge and skills. Ford PAS professional
development integrates various components—face-to-face, online, and school-based—that are most
likely to positively affect teacher instruction and, ultimately, student learning.

Enlist resources from higher education, business, and community leadership to support high schools
in the reform process.
Through the partnerships essential to the Ford PAS program, students interact and develop
relationships with people from business, higher education, and community organizations as part of
their learning experiences. Leaders from businesses, colleges, and universities—as well as other
important members of the community—are part of the educational experience of students and can
both add to and learn from these partnerships.
Aligning Ford PAS to ADP Benchmarks
A comparison of the knowledge and skills taught and applied in the Ford PAS curriculum to specific
Achieve ADP benchmarks shows a high degree of alignment between the content of Ford PAS and the
objectives of ADP. (See the document “Ford PAS Alignment to the Achieve American Diploma Project
(ADP) Benchmarks.”) In addition, Ford PAS teaches this content in a contextualized way, showing
students the connection between what they are learning and its uses and purposes in the world of work.
Particularly for students who struggle with traditional academic courses and require extra class time in
these subject areas, Ford PAS provides an engaging alternative curriculum that promotes student mastery
of the knowledge and skills necessary for future success.
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