My youngest is now 19, but all of my kids had "common core" math in Denver Public Schools. That was an utter travesty. I had the tail end of the "new math", and it was obvious even then that arithmetic drills were monumental wastes of times. Apparently, the common core folks had not heard of pocket calculators, or calculator apps on cell phones.

If "math" does not account for reality, of course people are going to treat it as a meaningless barrier to be overcome rather than learned. Also, math is more than arithmetic. Using picture of coins. For Chrissake.

For the first years of school, it is actually very beneficial to pretend that calculators don't exist.

Students must be accustomed to do simple arithmetic without the help of a calculator, or else their mathematical abilities will be negatively impacted. Same for learning multiplication tables, recognizing the associations between the numbers is important.

Only when they begin to calculate things which exceed the number of mental tokens that they can handle, then they can start using a calculator with no ill effects.