I agree with you on the over emphasis of certain topics and the need to shift more to mathematical thinking rather than ending up with kids tending too much on (often short term) memorizing. Many students jump right to the quadratic eqtn because they are told it always works. Even when factoring might be simpler and more elegant. The common core was misunderstood by most folks, me included initially. But ~~that is~~ its goals are more towards mathematical thinking and connections as opposed to memorization and applying algorithms. Even simple ones such s stacked subtraction or multiplication. It's implementation was poorly done, teachers weren't trained and again the testing regime constraints bore down. But it's thinking more towards future though it too may need to speed up with changes.