Like what Sun's doing with Java in their Java Certified Developer (as opposed to Certified Programmer). It certainly sounds a lot more useful than what currently passes for certification. Being a so called certified "Master" of Perl by one group (nothing that I'm proud of, but hey, I was unemployed and taking the tests beat watching Bonanza reruns), it only takes me about have a minute at the Monastery to realize that how far I am from really being one.
It seems to me that a lot of the problem is that employers are going to need something that they can throw at someone through a simple web application. Is it possible for this to really work?