The U.S. National Academy of Sciences – Board on International Scientific Organizations is the IMU Adhering Organization. Within the Academy the body charged with interacting with ICMI is the U.S. National Commission on Mathematics Instruction (USNC/MI).
Its mission is to nominate the US country representative fro ICMI, as well as “to plan, recommend, and encourage projects of national importance in mathematical education sciences.” The USNC/MI’s focus is international, where we ask, What can we learn from other countries? And, how can we advance mathematics education globally? Although issues of postsecondary mathematics education are of interest, our priority is PreK-12 education.
The U.S. educational system is large and decentralized, with each state and territory responsible for its own educational governance. In addition to public schools, many students attend private schools, charter schools (which are publicly funded but operate under their own bylaws), or are homeschooled. The U USNC/MI has no authority regarding curriculum, teacher preparation, or national standards.
There are several other associations like:
- National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM)
- Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators (AMTE):
- Psychology in Mathematics Education- North America (PME-NA)
- American Educational Research Association Special Interest Group in Mathematics Education
With almost 4000 institutions of higher education in the United States, we are not able to name all of the entities that do research in mathematics education.
• Journal of Research in Mathematics Education
• Mathematics Teacher Learning & Teaching PK-12
• Mathematics Teacher Educator
There are many paths to teacher credentialing, including traditional university-based teacher certification as well as short term alternative pathways. Some charter schools operate as schools of education and credential their own teachers, while teachers in private schools do not always receive formal teacher preparation. Like many countries, the U.S. faces a shortage of mathematics teachers, further fracturing our system of mathematics education as many teachers are “out-of-field,” with this being more common in underserved communities.
There is no national curriculum in the United States. This institutional diffusion of the U.S. system impacts mathematics education in multiple ways. Unlike countries with national mathematics curricula, each of these entities selects its own curriculum. Further, there are no national standards for mathematics education, with some states and territories adopting standards and others not doing so.
Each of the 50 states has its own standards that specify the mathematical knowledge and skills that students are expected to learn in each grade (K-8) or grade band or course (9-12) (it depends on the state).
The question of how to teach the standards, i.e. the question of implementation, is the question of curriculum, and this is chosen by each school district. There are roughly 18,000 public school districts in the US, and as well students may be in a private school or be home-schooled.
Each state lists its own standards somewhere on a state website. (There are also standards for other disciplines such as language arts.) For an analysis and comparison of the different state standards, there is a report "The State ot State Standards Post-Common Core, Fordham Institute, 2018"; this document is an analysis and expresses professional judgments, rather than a collection of the actual standards.