The names government devises for its laws sound so hopeful. No Child Left Behind. And now, the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which promises to empower each school district to carry out its principles and deliver high student achievement.

Ultimately, in the newly homegrown education plan being devised now, the principals and the teachers will need to work collaboratively. They must make sure that each person sharing custody of a child’s academic growth is accountable for that student’s success — or failure.

In its final years of implementation nationwide, No Child had developed cracks. It became clear, when schools started falling short of high academic standards, that some children were being left behind.

No Child was a national push, but increasingly, states sought and were granted waivers. Finally, in a rare show of bipartisan accord, ESSA passed Congress in December. Agreement came partly because the notion of local control for schools resonated across party lines. Now the federal statute begins a long trek down the road to full implementation in the 2017-18 school year.

In Hawaii, educators have been quick to take advantage of the loosened federal ties around testing and teacher evaluation.

Enabled by ESSA, the state Board of Education — with the enthusiastic support of the teachers union, the Hawaii State Teachers Association — recently did away with the link between a teacher’s job evaluation — and salaries — and how students do on standardized tests.

This linkage had been a hard-won concession from the union, sought by the state Department of Education. The DOE’s aim was to meet mandates under Race to the Top, the Obama administration’s competitive grant program.

Complaints from teachers that the job-evaluation system was unfair had intensified, despite metrics showing that 98 percent of teachers going through it were rated “highly effective” or “effective.” With so few found to be in serious need of improvement, DOE officials insisted, the evaluation scheme could hardly be considered punitive.

Still, the DOE has conceded now that the evaluation system wasn’t perfect, and the BOE decision is a done deal. A new task force, convened by Gov. David Ige, will work over the next year developing a new strategic plan for implementing ESSA, including a new way of gauging student achievement.

The problem is that for the next year, there will be no strictly quantitative measure of achievement factored into evaluations, and that’s a loss.

In the coming months, school leaders and their communities must work to replace it with carefully vetted criteria for gauging student progress, one that can be factored into a teacher’s evaluation as well.

Teachers protested that testing under No Child was excessive, and that there was a lag between the evaluations and the student performance on which they were being judged. In effect, a teacher’s rating included weight from scores from previous students, not the ones currently being taught.

Further, many teachers were not instructing in subjects that were tested under No Child. Scores from students they hadn’t necessarily taught were counted — unfairly, they said — as part of their job evaluations.

Still, the nexus between a teacher’s evaluation and the students under their watch must be kept to some degree. The new student achievement criteria should be discussed among a teacher’s departmental peers and involve significant oversight by principals as well.

ESSA will require extensive public outreach, which is a good thing. A survey is posted on the DOE’s blog at hiqualityed.tumblr.com, with responses due May 31. Community meetings will begin in the fall.

For all its shortcomings, No Child did begin the crucial process of raised expectations for school performance.

There’s reason for hope that this latest push for educational reform can do better, owing in part to its local control, said Jessica Wong-Sumida, a board member with the Hawaii State PTSA.

“We’re also very excited that family engagement is woven throughout ESSA and look forward to seeing how that will be implemented,” she said.

School communities have asked for more control of their children’s education, and now they will have it. The onus is on all of us, but especially on principals, faculty and administrators, to make the most of this chance.