Very good to see. Here is what they are up against.

Constructivism - another way of telling parents, its up to the kids to figure it out on their own. At the same time hamstringing parents by discouraging the memorization of the time tables and other basic facts to automatic recall, and heavy discouragement of standard algorithms.

A 2013 CBC radio - “The way we teach math
Math will make the difference between wealth and poverty, says Wilfrid Laurier professor Donna Kotsopoulos. The problem is, a lot of people give up. So what’s wrong with the way we teach math that so many of us aren’t getting it?”

Watch the professor with the education degree evade questions that she does’t want to answer, such as parents taking their kids to the private tutors. Note also, apparently parents don’t do the right things for their children when they are small. How many kids could do simple addition and subtraction by cookies and keeping track of their toys, and by the middle of grade 1, could no longer do it? Its a good question to posed because I believe there the instruction of math is why a good portion of our children are having difficulties in the primary grades.

http://www.cbc.ca/ontariotoday/2013/01/22/tuesday-the-way-we-teach-math/#socialcomments

One of the parent helpers being pushed and created by the professor - Little Counters
http://www.wlu.ca/page.php?grp_id=2539&p=22625

What is never mentioned is that there is all kinds of ways without paying a single dime to help out with numeracy.

Busy work - “Sample Letter to Introduce the Take-Home
Math Program to Parents (Primary Level) “
http://eworkshop.on.ca/edu/pdf/Mod35_Parent_Letters.pdf

Its another way to download the teaching of math unto the parents, so the school doesn’t have to teach it.

On the Ontario MathGains site - a series of videos mostly composed of edubabble, and enough to confused any parents. Isn’t it any wonder that kids learn to hate math?
http://www.edugains.ca/newsite/math2/mathematicalprocessesvideo.html

The negative outcomes of the Ontario math curriculum and for that matter across Canada - “Thousands of first-year students at Ontario community colleges are taking catch-up courses in basic math skills — fractions, decimals, percentages — that they should have learned in grades 6, 7 and 8, according to an alarming new study.”
http://www.thestar.com/life/parent/2012/05/19/growing_number_of_ontario_college_students_need_help_in_grade_school_math_study_finds.html

By the way since then, it has increase - its at the 40 % taking remediation and in other places at the 50 % mark. Learning for the first time or relearning on stuff that should have been mastered in elementary school.