Across the country, the way mathematics is taught in the classroom and in textbooks has been changing notably. Classrooms are often organized in small groups where students ask each other questions and the teacher is discouraged from providing information. Students may even take tests in groups, if they have tests at all. Meanwhile, the students practice their fundamentals less and less.
Time consuming projects and essays that involve very little mathematics are the rage.
Calculator use is growing and taking away expectations for student learning. Textbooks, if the students have them at all, are full of color pictures and stories, but not full of mathematics. The books often don't even give explicit definitions or procedures. Many of these programs don't even teach the standard algorithms for the operations of arithmetic. Long division is a devil that is to be beaten into extinction - and if they manage that, multiplication will be next.