The point of most of the common core math changes were to teach numeracy rather than rote arithmetic. Remember how some teachers said "you won't just have a ca

The point of most of the common core math changes were to teach numeracy rather than rote arithmetic. Remember how some teachers said "you won't just have a calculator on you at all times" and it turned out that we all carry around what would have been supercomputers for the time? Early math education realized that too, and shifted the focus to quickly estimating solutions through understanding the relationships of their numbers so you can go "hey, something's not here" when you work with your calculator, rather than just accepting whatever garbage out came from your garbage in. It is complicated, but the point isn't to get the right answer per se, it's to give kids a geometric intuition of numerical relationships by going through the whole rigamarole.