Yes. I was helping my great nephew with his math homework one day. I have several science degrees and I had to take about 10 minutes to figure out what the exercise was trying to achieve. Since he was only a first or second grader, there were no written instructions. His instructions were whatever his teacher had said. How any parent is supposed to help if they are unable to know what to do. Of course when you understand common core, that is exactly the point - to further alienate parents from children. It puts parents at a disadvantage and too many are just willing to abdicate to the teacher and the system.

These kids don't learn how we learned by rote memorization of basic math functions, so right away there is a disconnect between parent and child unless they too learned the same way. A smart parent steps in and still teaches their child the old way even if it conflicts with how math, or anything else for that matter, is being taught in school. In addition, these kids are told they can use calculators. Why? Because they don't learn math. All they know how to do is punch the right keys and trust the answer is correct. They don't actually learn how to do a math problem and come up with the answer on their own. There are already far too many people that cannot do simple math without a calculator.

I read large parts of common core when it first came out and a huge part of it involves data collection. Why? To identify how children learn and use the system to create elite drones. The majority of children will be left behind as a common drone class that will not be required to do anything beyond the most basic tasks. People are much easier to control if they are uneducated - something our founding fathers understood. What I noticed with the math assignment that could be extrapolated on a larger scale was identification of those children with a particular aptitude to think a certain way - at least where it concerns mathematical ability. This identification is meant to tag certain kids to channel them into STEM education. This was one of the stated goals of common core. Everyone else can just remain illiterate and unable to think for themselves.

As you stated, it is that crazy tens system - an attempt to jettison another piece of what has made the US and our system unique. They don't like the fact that other than within the scientific community and some manufacturing, we are not using metric. The common core math is an attempt to get us shifted into metric. It is bizarre in its approach. What would take us a couple of seconds to come up with the answer to a simple math equation, common core makes a child try to learn a complex series of steps to round up or down to get to a more workable number to finish the problem - or so some educator thinks it should be in order to justify their paycheck. As you stated, no wonder none of these kids can do math.

Believe it or not, my father taught me that system when I was a child. My brother and sister never grasped it. So I was the only kid that learned both ways. My father was a journeyman machinist that could do calculations in his head with very strict tolerances and be nuts on. That is how I was able to recognize it when trying to figure out the homework. They are looking for certain kids. To what end, is anyone's guess. The rest can just fall to the wayside as far as they are concerned.