EDITORIAL : OUT WITH THE BAD; REFORM STORMS THROUGH THE BUNKER AT LAUSD.

VOTERS shouted from the top of their lungs Tuesday - they're mad as hell at the LAUSD and they're not going to take it anymore.

In an era of political cynicism, L.A. voters sent politicians an unmistakable message of reform - or else.

Two incumbents on the incompetent Los Angeles Unified School Board were ousted outright - Jeff Horton and George Kiriyama - and replaced with reform candidates Caprice Young and Mike Lansing.

A third - Barbara Boudreaux - was forced into a runoff.

And incumbent David Tokofsky, who was backed by Mayor Richard Riordan as a reform candidate, barely hung on as voters obviously were in a ``throw all the bums out'' frame of mind.

For two decades, LAUSD's board and administrative leadership have promoted failure, rewarded ideology over excellence and pushed achievement to the back of the bus.

Unions received everything. Children, if they were lucky, got the budget leftovers.

And those principals, teachers and students who strived for standards, achievement and excellence, schools that tried hard to make a difference, were beaten into submission and urged not to stand out, not to make everyone else look bad.

The result - a third of the district's half-million students fail to graduate from high school.

Universities are forced to offer remedial classes just to get LAUSD graduates on par with other students.

Community colleges are overloaded with students playing catch-up when they should be honing their skills for better-paying jobs, more opportunities.

LAUSD has so failed a generation of children that taxpayers in the city and county now have to pay for those failures.

Voters are tired of it. Parents are sick about it. And taxpayers are fed up with being betrayed by self-serving bureaucrats and incompetent elected officials.

It's time for a change.

Voters want quality and success.

Parents want results. They want to know that when they send their children to school, they will come home at the end of the day and the end of the school year knowing how to read, write and master math skills.

The new board has a chance to turn 20 years of failure around. For starters, clean house.

Fire do-nothing administrators. Reward excellent teachers. Support principals who demand results.

Riordan won the first battle. Now it's up to the new board and the Committee on Effective School Governance to meet with the heads of the unions and parents to develop a plan that sets children on the path to real learning.

It's time for LAUSD to turn its F for failure into an A for achievement.