No concensus on math. education

Sciencemagazine has two articles:U.S. Expert Panel Sees Algebra As Key to Improvements in Math
and Expert Panel Lays Out the Path to Algebra--and Why It Matters
on National Mathematics Advisory Panel report which came out a few months ago. It seems that there is no concensus but two points of agreement seem to be (From an interview with the chairman of the panel):
"Q: The report notes that U.S. elementary students do okay on international math tests and that the falloff begins at the end of middle school and accelerates into high school. So why focus on K-8 math?
L.F.: You can also argue that the falloff reflects the inability of students to handle algebra. If you look at success rates in algebra or proficiency in algebraic concepts, there's ample evidence that students are not succeeding, and our charge is to increase the likelihood that they will succeed.
Q: Why do so many students have trouble with fractions?
L.F.: Fractions have been downplayed. There's been a tendency in recent decades to regard fractions to be operationally less important than numbers because you can express everything in decimals or in spreadsheets. But it's important to have an instinctual sense of what a third of a pie is, or what 20% of something is, to understand the ratio of numbers involved and what happens as you manipulate it.
...
Q: What's the panel's view on calculators?
L.F.: We feel strongly that they should not get in the way of acquiring automaticity [memorization of basic facts]. But the larger issue is the effectiveness of pedagogical software. At this stage, there's no evidence of substantial benefit or damage, but we wouldn't rule out products that could show a benefit. If a product could be demonstrated to be effective on a sizable scale under various conditions, the panel would be interested."
There is a link to the report in the second panel but it does not seem to be working.
From the first article "Taking aim at watered-down courses, the report defines the content of a rigorous algebra course as well as what students need to know before taking it. It urges school districts "to avoid an approach that continually revisits topics, year after year, without closure," part of what critics deride as a "mile-wide, inch-deep" math curriculum. It recommends giving teachers more authority to choose those educational materials and practices best suited to their students. It also calls for more useful assessments of what students know and for shifting educational policy debates "away from polarizing controversies.""
I remember taking Algebra for the first time in 9th grade. My father was transferred twice and I ended up having three doses of Algebra in that year and never had problems with Algebra since then. But I feel that it is mainly a language to study other interesting things in math. and not an end in itself.