It would be difficult to find a single person in Hawai'i's educational establishment who is perfectly happy with the federal No Child Left Behind law.

The combination of high-stakes testing and rigorous "sanctions" for schools that fail to meet progress goals has produced headaches for teachers, administrators and system officials.

But the long-term solution to such problems is to reform and rationalize the NCLB program. There is no value in simply throwing in the towel and setting lower standards that almost anyone could meet.

The trick is to work, locally and nationally, for flexibility that will allow the best of No Child (high expectations) to combine with educational reality on the ground.

In that context, the Board of Education must move cautiously with its idea of re-evaluating the state's academic standards to allow more students and more schools to meet the goal of adequate yearly progress.

Hawai'i admittedly has relatively high standards, measured by the Hawai'i State Assessment test. Naturally, the higher the standard, the more likely it is that some students and schools will have trouble meeting it.

There may be room for a more sophisticated measuring tool, perhaps using a "basket" of indicators that include the assessment test, the ongoing SAT tests and even the national Assessment of Educational Progress.

But the real goal is to achieve more flexibility in how we achieve what should remain tough, high-expectation standards.

Already, the federal Department of Education has moved off what had been a fairly hard-line approach on these matters to recognizing the need for greater flexibility and more room for states to deal with their own educational challenges on their own terms.

Hawai'i should join with other states and other educational entities in pushing for such changes rather than changing standards in a way that cheats the kids just to meet an arbitrary goal.

The purpose of our educational system is not to prepare students to hit a particular mark on any test or set of tests. The tests are just a tool for educators to determine where they are succeeding and where they need to apply more effort.

The Board of Education has just launched a new ad hoc subcommittee on the No Child law and its ramifications. That committee should resist the urge to simply tweak standards just to make it easier for students and schools can achieve them.

Rather, the goal should be to keep standards high and work on what are the best tools and techniques to reach and exceed those expectations.

And a key tool is training teachers to teach those high standards with an eye on a quality curriculum that will encourage lifelong learning.