I've always wondered why the US has a Department of Education but it doesn't produce a national curriculum. It's mission isn't directly tied to teaching itself [1]. Looking at the rise of sites like the Khan Academy and other services, it seems clear to me that content creation and delivery of core subjects could be centralized, and tutoring, homework, testing, and assessment could be localized. I know that would threaten some politically powerful interest groups (teacher unions and publishers), but I think it's a logical progression if we want to provide students across the country the same learning materials.
It's going to be hard to have a national curriculum without either watering down subjects like biology or US history to the point that they're totally useless, just rote memorization of falsehoods.
Really, simply believing in creationism does not conflict with most science, even biological science, and certainly not with US history. Of the 40% who believe in creationism (accepting your claim, though the source I'd certainly not consider unbiased), most have mainstream religious beliefs about the origin of the universe, earth, and life, but do not dismiss most of what science has learned in fields like medicine, biochemistry, genetics, etc.
For example, I myself have certain "creationist" beliefs but also accept the scientific evidence that evolution/natural selection happens, and I don't see any conflict there.
Within the article the definition of creationism in the context is clearly defined in the first paragraph:
"A new Gallup poll, released Dec. 17, reveals that 40 percent of Americans still believe that humans were created by God within the last 10,000 years."
There is another 40% thinking like you claim, but there still is that 40% who are about as anti-scientific as you can get.
simply believing in creationism does not conflict with most science, even biological science,
To the contrary, taking the Sunday school story (it's not really the Bible story) of creation seriously as an explanation for the world's origin or the origin of species requires willfully massive amounts of scientific evidence.
If someone who takes the Sunday school story of creation seriously has sole influence on a school curriculum, that will be a lousy school curriculum about most areas of science. That said, I support the liberty of parents to direct the education of their own children while their children are minors, believing with John Stuart Mill that "A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body. An education established and controlled by the State should only exist, if it exist at all, as one among many competing experiments, carried on for the purpose of example and stimulus, to keep others up to a certain standard of excellence." On Liberty (1859), pp. 190-91. But within the framework of pluralism in provision of primary education, I strongly support government-funded schools using the best available evidence in designing curricula in science, mathematics, history, and really any subject, and that takes creationism out of the science curriculum.
(Basis of knowledge: I grew up in a religious denomination that promoted belief in creationism, and had a childhood friend, an all-but-Ph.D. electrical engineer, who grew up in a denomination that demanded belief in creationism. He took me to "creation science" conferences beginning at high school age, and I have read much from all sides on theories of the origin of humankind, the earth, and the universe. Creationism simply has no leg to stand on scientifically. I don't require my homeschooled children to believe in creationism, but rather read aloud to them books like Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne and The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins, so that they are more familiar with scientific evidence than most of their neighbors who attend the local public schools.)
[1] http://www2.ed.gov/about/what-we-do.html