TERC Investigations Math Curriculum - is it really this bad?

[padren]

I am really not sure if this is an accurate depiction of math education in the US but I've heard from college students that "this really happens" and screws them on their math skills.

 

Essentially, it appears to be an attempt to teach conceptual fundamentals but even then it seems to really fail in this regard - spectacularly.

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/10/its-not-just-writing-math-needs-a-revolution-too/263545/

 

The video in the article shows a third grader trying to do a simple addition problem and you can tell right from the start that she's jumping past the initial "conceptual" steps and goes straight into procedure, which is horribly burdensome and clunky for the problem she's trying to solve:

 

 

I'm including this in politics because this does seem to be an issue with public education, but before I let my brain implode entirely I'd really like to know what the community here thinks and make sure I'm not just getting trolled by some agenda pushing misrepresentation.

 

I also don't have kids, so I'm pretty far removed from what education looks like. A friend of mine that's studying to be a math teacher sent me this and I'm still trying to figure out what to make of it.