There is also a side-effect to this first generation of New Math learners. There is no help/support at home. I am a "math person" so to speak and have never struggled with performing most math calculations. I do it every day at work. However, I first noticed an issue in my home life when my daughter came home with math homework (Grade 3 at that time) and I had no idea what she was doing. She was struggling and was asking me for help and I couldn't provide it. I had to ask her teacher to send me an answer key so I could teach myself first and then try to explain/teach it to my daughter. I now know how my parents felt when we switched to the metric system. Anyway, not that this response is any help to the original poster but I think educators need to realize that this is a problem with moving to a new way of teaching.
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