ARNOLD BETTER GET HIS NUMBERS RIGHT ON EDUCATION.

Byline: JILL STEWART  Capitol Punishment

LET'S hope that while Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger zipped around New York with federal Secretary of Education Rod Paige during the Republican convention, Paige enlightened Arnold on the Education Wars that Schwarzenegger has mangled thus far.

I feel no joy in having correctly predicted 10 months ago that Schwarzenegger and state Education Secretary Richard Riordan were so green they ran the risk of being rolled by sophisticated anti-reformist education unions.

School reform is under attack by unions and their loud mouthpiece, Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg of Los Angeles. They pursue a multiphased war to lower standards in math, science, reading and English and control what kids learn. They've duped the snoozing Schwarzenegger - twice.

Anti-reformers do not see children as small people who need information from adults. Instead, they fervently view children as victims.

Goldberg, for years a hard-core union activist, was a classic failed teacher who passed along failing children. She became a disastrous force on the Los Angeles Unified School Board, which saw such core skills as memorizing the multiplication tables as ``rote'' and evil.

Goldberg, unfortunately now chairwoman of the Assembly Education Committee and a member of the state Curriculum Commission, left L.A. Unified so bereft of academics that I christened it ``L.A. Mummified.'' The nickname stuck. A student could be failing, yet get solid C's. To be kicked out, try using a gun. ``Diversity'' lessons abounded. A majority of kids emerged functionally illiterate.

Riordan fought for reform as mayor. Yet now, as education secretary, he is preoccupied with fixing school financing and empowering school principals. While Schwarzenegger and Riordan weren't looking, the Curriculum Commission acceded to dumbed-down science books. Then, the governor got rolled by the anti-English immersion faction, pouring $30 million into a separatist ``bilingual'' program.

As mayor, Riordan ousted Goldberg's union minions from L.A.'s school board, putting in reformers. Today, math and reading at many bad schools ranks with suburban schools. (Note: for disclosure purposes, I once worked for Riordan on a plan to launch a newspaper.)

But now Riordan and Schwarzenegger are in the doghouse. Rae Belisle, the brilliant executive director of the California Board of Education, is resigning. So has a key Riordan staffer. Meeting with upset educators recently, Schwarzenegger reportedly said he was ``slammed'' - tricked by Goldberg into supplying $30 million to divert immigrant kids out of English.

If Schwarzenegger doesn't wake up, he could wreck everything. Legislators including Loni Hancock, Marco Firebaugh and Martha Escutia will try to sneak through obscure changes, union-influenced ``review panels'' and special funding, all to blindside reform.

If anyone should bow out, it should be Goldberg's enabler, Board of Education member Bonnie Reiss, a Schwarzenegger confidante. Reiss became something of a Goldberg protege, a cozy relationship revealed by the Sacramento Bee. A classic Hollywood liberal, she was probably bound to buy into the ``victim'' dogma.

Goldberg and the unions are so emboldened they are fighting plans to dramatically improve math skills of California kids.

Few California students even grasp advanced math, such as calculus. Yet calculus is now taught to virtually every resident in many rising poor countries, including Bulgaria, Poland and much of Asia. Trained mathematicians, like globally respected Stanford professor Jim Milgram and UC Berkeley professor H.H. Wu, say California teachers try hard - but students don't learn much, because the teachers themselves are taught error-riddled, useless math. Says Milgram, ``This is not teachers' fault. Certified teachers ... if they take math at all, it's so weak it's a waste of time.''

Milgram and Wu proposed a crucial turnaround plan. The catch is that teachers must learn true math.

So Goldberg and a mathematically challenged math teachers' group, the so-called California Math Council, fought vociferously to rewrite the Milgram-Wu plan. Unprotected by Schwarzenegger, Milgram and Wu bailed out of the union-influenced war.

Says Milgram: ``Wu read their rewrite and was just sick, and wrote a note to them - a public document - saying it was filled with mathematical errors, all the old problems. ... The problems were so intense that it would be unconscionable not to speak up. It was riddled with a total lack of understanding of what is going on in mathematics and what the kids need.''

It's so much nicer for adults if they just dumb down the kids. And remember, kids are victimized by having to learn skills.

Such insanity.

Schwarzenegger must lead. He must lead the moderates who ushered in reform, like Marion Joseph and Kerry Mazzoni. Ignore hard-left Democrats, owned by unions. Ignore hard-right Republicans, mindlessly chanting ``local control'' - too dumb to realize that means union control.

And Reiss must be educated about the historically wrong Goldberg, whom I have described in past columns as ``the stupidest well-spoken person I know.'' Reiss needs to learn from true school turnaround artists. Try Nancy Ichinaga of Inglewood.

But this assumes Schwarzenegger agrees with reformers: Kids are not victims. They are untapped potential. What's badly lacking is adults with something to teach.