I am an educator for the last 15 years, I teach 7th grade math. It seems to me that the push is for accountability for the administrators who then push us to be accountable so that they can look good. No one seems to care about the well being of the children anymore. Program after program has come through my school and to be honest, none of them seem to help the learners. Most recently we are using Impact math. In the words of one child, "Impact Math has had no impact on me!"
Yes, I know it seems like we can get program after program at times. I often feel overwhelmed like a lot of teachers. Certain administrators can be headaches at times, but I think the greater threat now are the education liberals, who seek to blame teachers for anything and everything and promote anything negative about education (at least in my area). I have been amazed at the gossip spread around my own neighborhood (I live in my school boundaries). It's hard to tell others what is REALLY the case when you have others spouting off one thing or complaint after another.
One thing I will say over and over and over is that my parents took the initiative and stressed the importance of education with us. It took precedence over other things except for church. They did terrible things like not have cable TV or video game systems, limit our TV time, limited our time with friends on school nights, helped us with homework, expected good grades, taught us good moral values, and so on. As I get older, I realize more and more how thankful I am for them.
I have been extremely lucky as an educator (9 years) thus far as I have had many great parents to work with. In fact, I look forward to working with certain parents as I do with certain kids. But again it's hard to compete against sports, video games, and the like.
Again, if we're all on the same page and not against each other (no, I'm not talking about some feel-good howdy-doody program), then great things can happen.
Why do you have to "use" a certain "kind" of math? Why not just say, "No, we will now learn to divide fractions" without putting a stupid label on it?
Addition is addition, subtraction subtraction, and ditto for multiplication and division.