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RALEIGH -- A single set of academic standards are being developed for K-12 students across the United States.

The groups in charge of developing them have recently released a draft of the math and English requirements.

For example, a kindergarten student should be able to identify characters, settings, and key events in a story. And, a high school students should be able to use and explain the relationship between the sine and cosine of complementary angles. The LINK='http://www.corestandards.org'>Common Core State Standards are an effort to make academic requirements for rigorous and easier to understand for everyone.

"It also gives us a great opportunity to align textbooks and materials that teachers can use in the classroom," said June Atkinson, the state superintendent of schools. "It also gives us the potential of moving away from such a focus on testing to that of helping teachers deliver the instruction that is necessary for our students to be competitive in the global economy."

Terry Stoops, the director of education studies at the John Locke Foundation said a move towards nationalizing standards raises concerns, such as figuring out how students will be assessed according to the standards and whether they can be enforced uniformly nationwide.

"I think that there's too much potential for interference and too much potential, more than anything, that these standards get watered down," Stoops said. "That should be everyone's main concern at this point."

North Carolina's Department of Public Instruction is also in the midst of revising its own standard course of study. Atkinson said the recent changes to math requirements were developed with the national guidelines in mind, so there's very little difference.

"What it may require is that we have a delay in the implementation of the new mathematics standards," she said. "That would give us additional time to do the necessary professional development for all of our teachers."

The State Board of Education has already endorsed the national standards, so Atkinson said North Carolina could move quickly and adopt them by this spring or summer.

The public has until April 2 to comment on the draft document.