In a year when public education will find itself under the microscope, an area school district is making an interesting move about testing.

The Springfield school district plans to ask the state for permission to skip this year’s round of MAP (Missouri Assessment Program) tests. In its place, the district would administer its own spring testing program, which is already in place.

That’s part of the reason the district wants to skip the MAP: Because it gives out spring tests before the MAP tests, students already have test exhaustion. School board president Gerry Lee said the district gets more relevant and tailored information from its own tests than the MAP.

The district’s move comes in a year when President Barack Obama has promised a major revision to the No Child Left Behind Act, the federal law that has put so much emphasis on the MAP.

Back when the law was passed during the first months of the Bush administration, Missouri chose the MAP to be the benchmark by which to measure accountability and learning in public school districts. Performance on the MAP affects a district’s rating under a confusing alphabet soup of arcane acronyms and formulas.

Though we like the general notion of accountability that No Child Left Behind established, its ultimate premise is flawed. The act demands that every child, including those with learning disabilities or language shortcomings, be 100 percent proficient at learning by 2014.

Thank goodness a revision is coming three years early, according to Obama’s promise. When lawmakers finally get to it, we’ll watch the developments of a new law with a careful eye.

But until then, Springfield sets up some interesting questions:

• We like the idea of a district establishing and administering its own tests. But what assurance do parents have that the standards in those tests put their students at the top of their class nationwide? Or even worldwide?

• Will the district’s request empower other districts to do the same?

• Why have assessment tests at all? The MAP, even with its high degree of difficulty, is considerably flawed. It requires so much classroom time for preparation, yet it is ultimately meant to measure teachers, not students.

Tests are important, and testing is an inescapable part of life. But in school, a test should be focused entirely on a student’s education.