Math instruction in North America has been in trouble for decades. It started with an experimental curriculum that somehow got adopted without ever being put to the test of measuring learning outcomes.

Teachers have adopted opposition to standardised testing as an article of faith, because it sheds light on teachers and on schools with teaching problems. Such testing could also issue an early alarm on fad teaching methods failing to do the job.

When the first k-12 victims of the experimental math curriculum reached post secondary schools enrolment in math intensive areas, chemistry, computing, engineering, math, physics, statistics, ... all dropped and the students that showed up were poorly grounded in math, compared to the previous year. Female enrolment in C Sc at UVic dropped from 1 in 3 to 1 in 10 from one year to the next.

Time for the 1960s "new math" again.