S.R.
my dd does Kumon and she is WAAYYY ahead of the rest of her class. They have worksheets that have to be done every day and, although she doesn't like to do them all the time, it has really paid off. Granted, a lot of it is memorization, but the schools don't really make kids memorize math the way I did as a kid. Even though memorization is not "application", it helps them move on to other things since they're not spending time with the basic stuff.
The other kids are really weak in math and I feel bad for them that they're not made to learn it the way my dd has. We only do their math program and we plan to stick with it up through 6th grade (we are third grade now). We only go in once a week, but most of this stuff is just practice practice practice at home. It's nice to have them "forcing" us to do it. If we weren't in that program, we would probably let it slide and she'd wind up like most other American kids...way behind.
I teach at a community college and I can honestly say, many kids come out of high school and they can't do basic math, fractions, decimals, rounding, etc. Kumon is based on Asian teaching methods and they use international standards, which define "grade level" much higher than American's define "grade level.