Education has gradually become less about educating and more about producing students who can take standardized tests. The classroom has become less of a place of learning and more of a place used to prepare students for tests. Classroom conversation is limited, discussion with other classmates is prohibited in most scenarios, and when a student enters school, they often enter a place with more rules and restrictions than a prison. Teachers often teach to tests rather than in the real world. Rather than school being a place of free thought and discussion, it becomes a place where students don't think, but memorize facts so they can regurgitate them later on an exam. Education "reform" has created a factory in which standardized tests in particular "contain too few items to permit meaningful within-subject comparisons of students' strengths and weaknesses" (Conchar), which which means that even if a student has great abilities in a particular subject, a standardized test even correctly measures students' abilities in that subject. Two students might score equally, but one might be significantly stronger in different types of math that aren't even on the test. The best way to get students to learn is to have them perform tasks that can be repeated in the real world. In fact, "workers charged with loading gallons and gallons of milk into crates had no more than a sixth-grade education" but were able to outperform "better educated office workers [who] replaced them” (Green). This means that dropouts performed exceptionally better in basic skills than those considered educated and smarter. The reason those who are educated perform worse, even when the odds are against them, is because when it comes to the real world, it's not a problem of words on a piece of paper, this is reality and school does not prepare you. To succeed in their studies, students need more than just a diploma upon completion of high school and college. They need life skills, values, and the ability to apply the skills they “learned” in school. Currently, education is not properly training students for the real world. There is a lack of problem solving and an abundance of testing that only simulates reality. There are alternatives to tests, lectures, and classroom boredom fests. It is time that teachers are allowed to use these methods rather than being forced into the standardization that characterizes our education.