Since public demanded for a strong focus on basic skills and clear high standards, the NCTM then developed a curriculum and evaluation standards that was referred to as the NCTM standards published in 1989 (Klein, 2003).

The following decade then began with a spirited debate among many parties regarding the best math curriculum used in the US, which was so-called Math Wars. Parents and some mathematicians believed that students should be taught basic skills, while educational administrators, professors of education, and some other parties were proponents of conceptual understanding and higher order thinking (Klein, 2003). After a lot of considerations, some states, starting from California, then began using the NCTM standards (Klein, 2003).

Finally, at the end of the second century, TIMSS assessed the mathematical literacy of US eighth-grade students. Data revealed that compared to their international peers, US students had lower scores in geometry, measurement, and proportional reasoning, although closer to average in arithmetic and algebra (Steen, 2003).