The state certainly has an impact on local schools. In California for example the State Board of Education sets standards for education, and recently it published a framework whose first version discouraged students from taking Algebra I in middle school. Delaying algebra to high school and delaying calculus to college are opposite of my own upbringing and seem very wrong to me. It also had other guidelines that I vehemently disagree with, such as de-tracking in favor of heterogeneous student grouping.