The standards in this document are for Hospitality and Tourism programs and are designed to clearly state what the student should know and be able to do upon completion of an advanced high-school program. Minimally, the student will complete a two-year program to achieve all standards. The Hospitality and Tourism Standards Writing Team followed the nationally-recognized certification programs established by the American Hotel and Lodging Association. The standards are organized as follows: Content Standards are general statements that identify major areas of knowledge, understanding and the skills students are expected to learn in key subject and career areas by the end of the program. Following each content standard are a number of performance standards. Performance standards identify the more specific components of each content standard and define the expected abilities of students within each content standard. Each performance standard is supported by performance indicators. Performance indicators are very specific criteria statements for determining whether a student exceeds the standard, meets the standard, or whose performance approaches the standard. All performance indicators are organized into three categories according to degree of difficulty: Exceeds Standard; Meets Standard; or Approaches Standard. Any student considered successful in the completion of a particular performance standard will have successfully demonstrated all performance indicators in the "Meets" and "Approaches" sections for the performance standard. Furthermore, any knowledge and/or performance assessments should be based on the indicators in those sections. Content standard 3.0 addresses employability skills, where students must demonstrate proficiency in workplace readiness, career development, and lifelong learning. The competencies in this section are centered around the 21st Century Skills initiative and designed to be completed by the student over the course of his/her high school career. The final section of the document shows where the performance standards and performance indicators support the state academic standards for math, science, and English Language Arts (ELA). Where correlation with an academic standard exists, students in the hospitality and tourism program perform learning activities that support, either directly or indirectly, achievement of one or more academic standards.