National Standards, Local Control of Curriculum: Setting the Course of Mathematics Education in the United States

Abstract

In the U.S., a country comprised of over 14,000 school districts, 2.7 million teachers, and 47 million public school children, public education remains the purview of local decision-makers and the constitutional responsibility of states. Interactions among local, state, and national mathematics education initiatives and policies have had an interesting historical path. We examine the impact of national mathematics standards (the four standards documents produced by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics [NCTM]) over the past decade. In particular, we consider the complex interactions between national documents like NCTM has produced, and efforts to improve mathematics instruction at all levels.