I understand what you are saying, but I cannot reach the same conclusion as you that they are lowering the bar.
Even if at the moment a lot of people are exposed to algebra at a very young age, a very few people understand the maths behind, they use it as a set of rules to apply, which is very far away from how maths works..and then, leads to a bad use/generalization in unknown problem.
I didn't follow precisely the common core thing, but if I remember correctly, the idea behind is to teach to the child's to 'think' instead of having a rule based system. Ultimately leading to understanding algebra better and faster at a later stage, when it becomes only a corollary to one's thought.
When you can think more deeply and more abstractly at a young age, this may lead to better thoughts power, better logic, and ultimately better skills at math and in life. At least, I think this is the true idea behind the core, please if there is an expert on math education here correct me if I'm mistaken.
Of course, this is often difficult to accept for adults, as we want our child's to have 'at least' the same education of ourselves. But it is not obvious that the way we larned math, is a good way. If it is: why so many people do not like/understand maths? Isn't it a good thing to try newer teaching methods that we think are better?
I may be doing a big shortcut here: but from what I remember the core was worked out by very capable mathematicians in both mathematics and education and they were inspired by Korean/Japanese math systems that encourage the child's to think. If someone has references to this I would be interested as well :)