[slimetree]

This is an excellent thought experiment I genuinely wish were reality. That said, the root problem with standardized tests is that they're inherently hackable. Standardized tests are like desktop software: you write once and ship everywhere, and once you do people start reverse engineering it.

Any sufficiently hackable test will appear to work in the short-term if you just place it in front of admission to prestige, because of the large subset of high-achieving people whose lives' missions are to game any test placed in front of them, which drastically skews how well the test appears to predict achievement.

The things mentioned in the article are excellent things to test, but if you start measuring e.g. the number and type of of questions a kid asks within x minutes, cram schools will just adapt, and in a few years you'll hit the end of another cycle.