Parents rail against Common Core Math

An Iowa woman jokingly calls it “Satan’s handiwork.” A California mom says she’s broken down in tears over it. A Pennsylvania parent says it “makes my blood boil.”

As schools around the U.S. implement national Common Core learning standards, parents trying to help their kids with math homework say that simple arithmetic has become as complicated as calculus.

The standards for elementary math say that kids should not only be able to solve arithmetic problems using the methods their parents learned, but understand how numbers relate to each other.

That’s a radically different approach than many parents are accustomed to, and it’s leading to plenty of angst at home.

Common Core advocates acknowledge parents are frustrated, but blame the problems on botched implementation, insufficient teacher training or poorly written textbooks.