What are schools and students like today?

In this day and age, our education system is certainly not the same system that was in place 100 years ago. There is the nation-wide debate that our school system is "regressing" and our students are getting "dumber and dumber year after year". These accusations are not entirely true. We are producing inventors everyday of incredible products. Our investment in science and math have made for environmentalists, entrepreneurs, and scientists. All of these things careers that our students have  are promoted through funding and student/school competition. The competition setting, while others may not agree with it, can foster students to strive to be the best, letting them reach high to access their full potential. While schools create scientists, the traditional school setting does not do a good job at providing vocational training for students. In my school district, students who were interested in vocational training could attend an off-campus program for that. But the school itself did not have great opportunities for the students who were interested in that.
I think one of the downfalls of schools today is the emphasis on test scores. Teachers sometimes cannot help but "teach to the test" because their scores are based on how their students perform on tests. The common core standardized test model is what has taken over our education system today.
Here is a  video  on the problem with standardization.
Essentially, if we do not get rid of the notion that we need to "teach to the test" then our education system will never improve.

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