I'm a parent that has dealt with this first hand over the last several years with two kids in elementary school and it really bugs the crap out of me. I have actually looked into this on a few occasions and gone to the teachers/school about issues I see and many of these come down to bad interpretation and outsourcing as sad as that sounds. We are outsourcing the production of our school books to other countries. I can't tell you how many traditional/classic stories I have sat down and read with my kids that have horrific grammar errors, or subtle changes to the story line, it is truly disturbing what we are allowing to happen. Having a background in publishing I can only guess that much of it comes down to changing the right percentage of wording to avoid copyright issues and royalties.
It's good to know that I'm not the only parent noticing this... and I would suspect it is happening in school books in other countries as well that now outsource publishing to other coutries. It's not about not being able to do 1st grade math, it's about the clarity of the problem being asked. I have taken assignments to teachers because I just didn't get what they were asking and when confronted, they couldn't answer it either as many of these "new math" problems are set up in such a way as to be open to interpretation... both Johnny and Sue can have different answers and both be correct, it helps the district test scores and brings more money back to the school by having more kids that do above "average".
LOL.
The teacher that really opened my eyes to how bad it is has been in the district for almost 40 years and had taught my brother and sister, he said the change in what is being taught now compared to 20 years ago is sad.
If you have child in school right now, how similar do the basics look to what you studied when you were their age?