I guess I'm younger than all of you and being as I just came through middle school, elementary school no more than 4 years ago. I guess I'm in a position to talk about this stuff. I'm not entirely sure if I learned the "Common Core" way but a lot of the stuff seems pretty familiar to me. I didn't think the questions were super vague but I recall some questions like that that I didn't get as a kid. And I do remember doing latice in 3rd grade (someone mentioned it here) It was actually great for a younger age because to me it followed a very simple format and you are able to see the math right in front of you and actually build the mental capibility to add and subtract numbers quickly. A year later after I actually understood math like that I dropped it but the same basic priniciple was there. Regardless I'm not educated on this subject at all but it doesn't seem too bad to me. It's just different.
tl;dr I think it just reinforces the steps of learning, leaving the more complex shortcuts for later