Here in Michigan, our current sophomore class is the first class that will graduate with much tougher requirements as established by the state legislature a few years ago. We too are already experiencing what you've described in regards to algebra.
For anybody who'd like to make themselves even angrier about such affairs, I'd recommend John Taylor Gatto's "The Underground History of American Education," which you can actually read in its entirety on his website, though I find that the big book is more convenient as a dead tree. I don't necessarily agree with his conclusion that those responsible plan or foresee the consequences of their actions, and he's understandably thin on solutions, but he provides a wealth of documented information that may be of interest.
(As a side note, and even less related to scans, I've often wondered if algebra might gel better for students if the syllabus was guided, top-down, by problems, rather than presenting a sequence of "components." As I remember high school math, we just had to get through a bunch of abstract recipes, and "real world applications" were usually trivia items or vague generalities. I can't help but think that more students would have followed along if the "recipes" were discovered/presented in the service of attacking real engineering problems with all their warts.)
