A big problem in this debate is that most of the people involved don't seem to understand the difference between standards and curriculum.

Common Core contains no curriculum. It is only standards. Curriculum includes various cognitive approaches, many of which are totally different from each other, such as Saxon math, Singapore math, Investigations math, and so forth. That infamous number line worksheet signed by the frustrated parent is not Common Core, but rather Investigations math, which is a specific curriculum that a particular school district apparently chose to employ because they believed it would meet Common Core's high standards. Common Core does not require that any school choose Investigations math as its curriculum, though some schools may choose to do so. If you want to point out the problems with the frustrated parent's number line worksheet, that's fine, but at least recognize that what you're actually complaining about is Investigations math, and not Common Core.

A friend of mine said the following on facebook:
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The short explanation is that Common Core is a new set of standards implemented by a bunch of states when they got together to help improve education. The conspiracy theorists will tell you it's still just the Fed taking control from the local level, but what they won't tell you is that the Fed already dictates standards – Common Core is simply a new set of standards which exceed the old ones. My wife runs a top ranked charter school, and because her standards are already so high, she only had to make a few minor adjustments, one of these being "First graders will start to compose sentences." Curriculum, on the other hand, is how you meet those standards, and what materials you use to teach them. Common Core may impose a standard that says children will learn to add and subtract by Second Grade, but it makes no demands as to how schools should get there. That's up to the individual school districts. A district may choose Investigations math, Singapore math, Saxon math or another curricular method to meet that standard. The stupidity of that number line worksheet is not Common Core, but Investigations math or something similar. You wouldn't find anything close to that in Saxon math, yet Saxon is perfectly good at teaching math and also meeting Common Core standards.

In my opinion one of the real problems we have in this country is that we elect school board members based on popularity in the Parent-Teacher Association. The school board members are more often then not incompetent at advanced mathematics. When someone says, "We've been having trouble teaching math," school board members remember the "kill and drill" days from their own childhood with disdain. When a new curricular method like Investigations math is presented to them as an alternative to what they had to go through when they were kids, they jump all over it. And in doing so, they deny us our next generation of mathematicians.
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