A firm hand is an asset when it’s applied to the drive for better public schools. Once firmness becomes rigidity, however, that advantage is lost.

So the state’s decision to seek a federal OK for a redesigned and more flexible way of accounting for academic progress comes as good news.

The state Department of Education is wise to take this path, one that should lead schools toward a more balanced approach to education.

The law known as No Child Left Behind was finalized in 2002, amended and formally titled the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).

Its enactment represented a consensus: Schools must be held accountable to specific measures of achievement — adequate yearly progress, or AYP — so that children would not be allowed to slip through the cracks in the system and leave school without the skills they need.

Nobody would argue with the correctness of that aspiration, but in practice the implementation of a "one size fits all" mandate soon became evident. Benchmarks were set, and deadlines. The AYP bar was raised gradually with the goal of all students reaching proficiency by 2014, a date that hovered unthreateningly off in the future at the outset. But now it looms large, alarmingly.

The trouble is that falling short of AYP targets compelled a punitive response: Schools eventually were directed to restructure.

The school community became painfully aware of the "failure" brand, which stuck to them regardless of how much progress they had made or how close they had come to the mark.

And for all schools, "teaching to the test" on which scores were based became a compulsion that could obscure other learning opportunities.

The state DOE this week signalled to the Obama administration officials that it intends to apply for "ESEA flexibility," a program in which states are allowed at least in part to redefine the measures of success.

Schools will remain accountable to comprehensive plans for improving educational outcomes for all students, but they’re plans each state develops.

In its application, due by mid-February, Hawaii also must agree to high standards for getting students ready for college and careers — this the state already has done — and systems of evaluating teachers and principals that take student progress into account. That latter element already is being required of Hawaii in fulfillment of its $75 million federal Race to the Top competitive grant.

Budgetary restrictions make all this challenging, but DOE officials have come to the correct decision that the status quo can be improved.

This week Congress introduced legislation to revamp No Child, but the flexibility option will free the states to come up with their own better ideas in the meantime, without waiting for the endless Capitol Hill wranglings to yield a final product.

In the end, Congress should preserve some measure of flexibility in the final reauthorized law.

Various alternatives should be weighed in devising the state’s new accountability system. For instance, some schools have implemented their own educational enrichment curricula, such as the International Baccalaureate program, and the extra rigor of these ought to factor into how schools are judged.

To cite another example: The particular hurdles facing students who are still learning English also should be considered.

It is good that federal officials also are requiring states to do a lot of outreach on all this to the entire school community. That process should be kept as open as possible so that the final plan is well informed by groups most affected by the changes.

And it’s incumbent on those interest groups to weigh in. Public education is the job of professionals, but the best results will take participation from all who care about the schooling of the state’s future generations.