Does the United States have national standards?
No. Since the federal government of the United States has no constitutional or legislative mandate for a national curriculum (as is the case in most other countries), education is a function of the individual states. NCTM first developed Standards for mathematics in 1989 in the hope that states would use them to guide their state mathematics frameworks. Adopting the NCTM Standards is completely voluntary. Practically all states base their state mathematics frameworks and benchmarks on the NCTM Standards.
