Didn't the US have No Child Left Behind before Common Core. The same complaints were made about that. I agree though - we have targets for NCEA (grade 10 to 12 qualifications) that are so high they can only be achieved by offering lots of low level subjects. I have noticed though that a lot of the high schools are offering academic maths, general maths and basic maths whereas before they offered maths and sometimes a class referred to as 'cabbage maths'.