Educators and political leaders now realize the timetable for implementing the federal No Child Left Behind Act may be too ambitious. Flexibility will be key as we go forward.

But as we tweak the details, there is no reason to back off the larger goals. The task at hand is to find ways to achieve them - not reasons why we can't.

The law sets two pie-in-the-sky goals for eliminating persistent gaps in achievement between disadvantaged schoolchildren and their classmates:
* All students must be proficient in basic reading and math by the 2013-2014 school year.

* All teachers of core academic subjects must be "highly qualified" by the end of the 2005-2006 school year.

After protest from the states, the U.S. Department of Education has made changes. This week, Secretary Don Paige announced that science teachers could prove qualifications in individual fields or in the "broad field" of science. This will have no effect in California, which requires science teachers to be credentialed in the specific areas of science they teach - biology or chemistry, for example.

But new rules expanding how new teachers in rural areas can attain "highly qualified" status should help. Teachers without degrees can use years of experience teaching a subject, student test scores, continuing education credits or other "objective evaluations" to be highly qualified.

The department earlier announced that special education students with the "most significant cognitive disabilities," such as permanent brain injury, can take alternative tests more appropriate for their intellectual development. That certainly makes sense. It is absurd to expect the most disabled students to achieve the same proficiency in reading and math as other students.

The department also is allowing states to exempt test results of immigrants with limited English proficiency who have been in the state for less than a year.

But such changes shouldn't obscure the reality that the law was designed to change. The fact is, current standards of performance are appallingly low.

In California, for example, the goal for this year at elementary and middle schools is to have 13.6 percent of students proficient in reading and 16 percent proficient in math. Next year, the goal is 24.4 percent in reading and 26.5 percent in math.

At the high school level, things are worse. This year, the goal is to have 11.2 percent of students proficient in reading and 9.6 percent in math. Next year, the goal is 22.3 percent in reading and 20.9 percent in math.

Over the next decade, schools must show progress each year until all students can read and do basic math by the 2013-2014 school year.

States have to track the progress of students who are economically disadvantaged, have limited English proficiency, come from major racial and ethnic groups or have disabilities. Even in the best school districts, too many of these students are being left behind.

Tracking performance, providing services for low-performing schools and making sure teachers are qualified are things states should have been doing all along. It's likely, even with some federal assistance, states will need to revamp education budgets to raise student performance.

Congress and the president are right to insist, at the national level, on having qualified teachers in the classroom and making sure that each child can read and do basic math. The rest of us should be insisting on it, too.