re: (Not Common Core)-- Why are they teaching math this way?

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I've had the luxury of wading in with a first grader, rather than having it dumped on me with an older child, so I like it. I can get how older kids could be thrown off though. It should have been grandfathered in or something. But the concepts are all basically ways to do math in your head. They're teaching the different ways to solve problems I had to figure out myself under the old rote way.

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I agree completely. For the last few years I've watched how my (now) 2nd grader and 4th grader learn/are being taught stuff. The younger one gets it easily, because ALL of these concepts were new to her when introduced. The older one has had an easier time grasping the division and multiplication methods than the addition and subtraction ones, probably because (after a lot of early struggling) he had FINALLY learned "the way" to add/subtract and now they want to re-teach it to him using other methods to get the answer. Since he hadn't had much exposure to multiplication and division, he's now picking it up more quickly because he's presented different ways to do it from the start. The "re-learning" already mastered skills was a problem, not the acquiring of new skills.

My main complaint with Common Core is the implementation of it, and the lack of training for the teachers who have to present it to their students.