> Again, though, if creating new, better widgets requires calculus, student A may not have what it takes, but student B almost certainly can't do it.
I'm not so sure about this. What if student A was just better suited to learn Calculus when they were tested while student B bored by the class and teacher and stopped going/caring but, if given the chance to apply themselves in a non-academic setting working on real problems that affect people's lives, student B would learn Calculus twice as fast as student A and deliver a better widget in less time?
There are many more scenarios here that I could list but I think the primary point is that the context around the students, their lives, and the testing environment matters a lot and this is something that cannot easily be accounted for using numerical test scores
> But they also require some solid skills, and those skills are testable
Maybe badly. Leet Code is supposed to do this but is famously criticized. Probably better than nothing I suppose
I'm not so sure about this. What if student A was just better suited to learn Calculus when they were tested while student B bored by the class and teacher and stopped going/caring but, if given the chance to apply themselves in a non-academic setting working on real problems that affect people's lives, student B would learn Calculus twice as fast as student A and deliver a better widget in less time?
There are many more scenarios here that I could list but I think the primary point is that the context around the students, their lives, and the testing environment matters a lot and this is something that cannot easily be accounted for using numerical test scores
> But they also require some solid skills, and those skills are testable
Maybe badly. Leet Code is supposed to do this but is famously criticized. Probably better than nothing I suppose