Here is a video of a presentation Barry Garelick gave at a Sons of the American Revolution meeting in San Luis Obispo, CA. It is an excellent video addressing math education in the United States.
Barry has written numerous articles about math education. In one, The Myth About Traditional Math Education, he takes a look at math text books from the 1950s and 1960s that show teaching for understanding was important and included back then. In addition to having numerous articles and a couple of fun to read books, Barry blogs at Traditional Math.
About those fun books… To my knowledge, Barry has written three books. They are fun and humorous with some serious messages. Here are the titles of his books:
Math Education in the U.S.: Still Crazy After All These Years
Confessions of a 21st Century Math Teacher
Letters From John Dewey/Letters from Huck Finn: A Look at Math Education From the Inside
The Underground Parent 