Who'd have imagined it? The Bush administration, so determined to demonstrate its devotion to schoolchildren and their progress, now wants to pull the old bait-and-switch.

Hawai'i education officials already have discovered this disappointing, cynical strategy by the U.S. secretary of education, who last week announced a softening in her punitive and rigid No Child Left Behind program.

Truth be told, education secretary Margaret Spellings is undoubtedly trying to curry favor with Congress, where Democratic leaders are considering a vast overhaul of the six-year-old student achievement mandate that has been long on lofty goals and short on realistic solutions.

After all, the president in his waning months in office is scrambling to sustain a program that's at the center of his thin domestic legacy.

The secretary tapped her administrative authority to launch a pilot program that will allow up to 10 approved states to move away from the law's "pass-fail" system. Currently a school with many students failing reading and math tests is treated in the same way as one where relatively few students miss the mark.

The idea sounds nice. Approved states could then focus their resources on students who need the most help.

But unfortunately, Spellings has set the bar for that pilot unrealistically high. Pat Hamamoto, superintendent of Hawai'i schools, said she and her staff already have inquired about the program and learned the state's schools don't qualify.

Hamamoto said the feds would require states to have their assessment program already approved; Hawai'i is still finishing that process, developing tests for Hawaiian-language schools that meet state standards.

And the state is still working to meet a second requirement: that its faculty members meet federal standards as "highly qualified" teachers. But federal criteria is so confusing that many teachers couldn't be certified without further clarification in the law; it's wrong that they, or the state school system, should be penalized as a result.

Memo to the state's delegation: Don't be deterred by Spellings' plan. Go ahead with plans to overhaul No Child which is, itself, a failure.