**4. Emphasizing standardized testing and standardizing inequality**

Standardized test scores remain the penultimate measure by which politicians and administrators evaluate the relative successes of instructors and institutions [30]. The misuse, overuse, and overemphasis of standardized testing had multiple deleterious consequences for science and sustainability education. It functionally reinforces an outdated model of learning, emphasizing performance on singular, summative exams as indicators of educational attainment. These assessments typically fail to capture a glimpse of the true breadth of skills and knowledge students must acquire to participate fully in scientific discourse and affect substantive change [30–32]. For example, even though well-designed summative and end-of-course exams may be used to measure students ability to apply labels to elements of ecosystems and explain the ways in which they interact with one another [33], they may not measure whether students can apply this knowledge to make decisions about their own consumption of resources and engagement in practices that can help or harm the ecosystems they have influence over. This structure is designed to assess and incentivize students' ability to function within the existing systems, which has led humanity to the very brink of disaster. It is not intended to assess their ability to improve on these systems, a skill vital to the future of our planet and humanity. Additionally, many schools and educators opt to reduce the quality and quantity of science, history, and arts instruction to boost scores for the higher stakes math and reading exams [31–34]. This is especially true in the post-pandemic era, as schools scramble to make up for education gaps due to disrupted learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Students deserve better than this.

An overemphasis on standardized tests also contributes to a reduction in diversity in the STEM workforce as white, male students are more likely to score well on such tests and thus self-select into STEM fields, even though the exams have been demonstrated to be a poor predictor of success in STEM majors [30]. Such a trend operates in contrast to the goals of equity in education presented in the SDGs. Unequal STEM field participation and education are evident in research from around the world along lines of race, ethnicity, gender, and class [35–38]. The trend of disproportionate underrepresentation leaves humanity at the disservice of missing the valuable contributions in diversity of thought, skills, and perspectives offered by the disenfranchised populations. Diverse teams regularly outperform heterogeneous teams in problem solving [39]. It also leaves these vulnerable groups at the disadvantage of having less of a voice at the table, and therefore fewer opportunities for crucial self-advocacy [24, 40]. Interestingly, researchers examining the practices of 1,951 companies across 24 industrialized economies linked increased gender diversity to a 5% decrease in a firm's carbon emissions [41]. This suggests organizations can mitigate their climate change impacts as a side effect of focusing on boosting equity in the composition of their workforce, demonstrating another way in which sustainability goals are linked. Still, women and other oppressed populations across the world continue to face exclusion and under-investment in science education. Educators have a responsibility to be aware of and take effective steps to disrupt this harmful trend. Indeed, research has identified various modalities by which educators can achieve more equitable outcomes for their students [24, 42]. Culturally responsive, authentic learning experiences emerge as a trend in much of this research.

We raise the issues of emphasizing standardized testing and standardizing inequality herein as we wish to focus upon the contradictory roles schools play in society. Schools generally reproduce the inequities and inequalities we see in society and the economy [43]. And, while schools play a key role in reproducing social inequality, they simultaneously play a contradictory role with respect to society and social equality by allowing resistance to this reproduction. Students - and educators - do and must resist the social programming of schooling; and schools and individual classrooms must exist as contested sites of production of justice seeking to care for students, school staff, and the community in ways that build critical consciousness and critical social action [44].

The COVID-19 pandemic, which significantly disrupted education for students worldwide, has deepened many educational disparities [45, 46], exacerbating the disadvantages faced by vulnerable students. Furthermore, the pandemic has laid bare the perils of misinformation and mistrust in science [47, 48]. Intensifying climate change and ecological disruptions erode the natural safeguards to mitigate spillover events at the same time humanity is increasing travel and urbanization, amidst warnings of pandemics becoming a more frequent feature of the human experience [49]. Yet, in the scramble to make up for education gaps, many schools around the world have decreased investment in science education, opting to align content towards exams and backwards planning around standardized assessments [50]. We must choose to reimagine education to better cultivate the skill sets and content knowledge that can be harnessed to create a more sustainable future, instead of falling into the trap of replicating extant systems. COVID-19 has provided the silver lining of forcing rapid and sometimes revolutionary evolution of educational practices. Educators around the world have radically adapted their pedagogy [46, 48, 51]. While in-person field trips were canceled in many countries, educators explored alternative ways of connecting students to outside resources through video chats with local museums or using students' own backyards and homes as learning tools. Now is the time to harness the innovative spirit and move towards decolonized, equitable, and experiential learning practices to usher in a new era of sustainability [50, 52].
