My children are just starting to learn math, and whatever method your teacher is using, I'm pretty sure that mine is teaching the same thing.
I can assume one of two things:
a) The new way really does suck, and will produce students that can't do math
or:
b) the new way has some merit (some study or evidence is out there, however tenuous...), and students will learn math.
Since a) doesn't produce students that score well on standardized testing, I'm gonna go with b)
-John