But that's just my point: my son, in 5th grade in a US public school, hasn't gotten "one homework assignment after another requiring them to cut, paste, draw, and color". In fact, last year, he didn't score well enough on a math test, so he spent an extra half hour every morning for the rest of the year going to another teacher for rote arithmetic drills, which I thought was a bit excessive.
Maybe you need to read fewer right-wing rants about what educators say they're trying to get teachers to do, and pay more attention to what teachers are actually doing in classrooms.
Also, I believe most of your citations pre-date "No Child Left Behind", which from what I understand greatly increased the emphasis on standardized test scores.
In fact I pay very close attention to what teachers actually do in classrooms, to the extent that I've traveled to several East Asian countries to observe how they teach with my own eyes and read the academic studies contrasting their approaches. These countries stomp us every four years in the TIMSS, and I wanted to know how exactly how they did it and, if necessary, how to duplicate it in my own home.
The difference is stark. In Asia, they teach people math the way you would expect to teach someone if you were trying to maximize their proficiency in almost any skill: sports, chess, whatever. In the US, the education industry is pushing a very different approach, one whose primary objective is NOT maximizing the proficiency of each student.
But, you don't see it, and the US education industry (meaning the ed schools and their progeny, not individual teachers) would prefer that people like you go on ascribing any observation of their inferior results to "right-wing ranting" so you'll stay out of their way or, even better, go out of your way to try to discredit their critics.
Of course many teachers, even whole school districts, resist this pressure, and the ed schools describe that resistance in peer-reviewed journal articles such as the one I cited. If what I'm describing were merely the imaginings of those kooky right-wingers, like the leader of the Democratic Party in the Senate I cited above, then what is all this talk by the ed schools of "resistance"? Resistance to what, something that would increase math proficiency? Why would math teachers be "especially resistant" to maximizing math proficiency, or are they resisting pressure to make changes that would reduce math proficiency?
If your son had been in East Asia, he would have done the half hour of drills every day BEFORE taking that test and probably would have avoided the problem he apparently had. How do you think he, or his classmates, would do now on a test for Asian 5th graders? (Ex: 1/6 of A is equal to 5/9 of B. 2/5 of A is 270 more than 1/3 of B. What is the ratio of A:B in simplest form? Source: misskoh.com)
My kids are learning from the materials I brought back from Asia, and I'm trying to teach using the methods I saw (though I feel so amateurish compared to those amazing Asian teachers) and the results are, well, Asian-level. These are materials and teaching methods optimized for math proficiency and nothing else. Their friends think they are geniuses, and I have to keep reminding them that in Asia, their whole class (though not each individual student) would be operating at their level.
If I could, I would switch the whole country to these materials and methods, but guys like you can be counted on to say, "I don't see the problem, it's just more uninformed nonsense from someone who reads too much right-wing ranting". With your help, our public education industry can continue unimpeded by guys like me. My own kids will face less local competition as a result, but I fear the consequences for my country as a whole will be dire, so I would change it if I could.
Maybe you need to read fewer right-wing rants about what educators say they're trying to get teachers to do, and pay more attention to what teachers are actually doing in classrooms.
Also, I believe most of your citations pre-date "No Child Left Behind", which from what I understand greatly increased the emphasis on standardized test scores.