EDITORIAL : TIME TO LEAD; GRAY DAVIS PROMISED TO IMPROVE EDUCATION, AND THERE'S NO TIME TO WASTE.

AT the top of his list of things to do, Gov.-elect Gray Davis has promised to fix the state's broken-down education system.

It's a promise we expect the new governor to keep.

Here are a few modest suggestions for the new governor when he takes office in January.

Whip all the districts into shape by picking the worst district - hint, the Los Angeles Unified School District comes to mind - and make an example of it.

We're not talking the Draconian measures taken by Richard Daley, Chicago's feisty Democratic mayor. But there are some lessons Davis could learn from Daley as the delegation from L.A. Unified was learning firsthand last week on a visit to the Windy City.

Given free rein by the Illinois Legislature, Daley shocked the city in 1995 by ousting the school board, replacing its members with top business and civic leaders and putting his own finance director in charge of the school district.

The result: a get-tough accountability plan that has shown dramatic student improvement, cleaned out deadwood staff, rid the district of debt and launched a massive capital improvement campaign.

We don't expect Davis - elected on a promise to dramatically improve education - to do any less. To start with, he could use his office to pressure Superintendent Ruben Zacarias to toughen his modest plans for reform and get the resistant United Teachers Los Angeles to buy it.

Zacarias' plan is a watered-down version of what Chicago did. It identifies schools with dropping test scores and puts them on probation if they don't improve. In addition, teachers and principals can face dismissal.

So far, the UTLA has opposed the plan with lukewarm support from some school board members. Davis won by a wide enough margin to be able to stand up to the special interests that helped in his election.

In addition, he could push the Democratic-controlled Legislature to include enough money in the budget for Democrat Controller Kathleen Connell to order a top-to-bottom audit of the LAUSD's questionable financial dealings.

During a campaign swing through L.A. prior to the election, Connell said her office couldn't possibly do a thorough audit of the district, even though several leaders have requested it, because it would be too costly and time consuming.

Connell exaggerated the problem, saying it would take 100 auditors working three years to unravel the district's Byzantine budget nightmare to find out where every penny of the district's $6.5 billion budget has gone.

So the LAUSD, that 5,000-pound gorilla of incompetence and possible corruption, is rewarded merely by being too big to tackle? That must be what they mean by economies of scale.

Davis has no time to waste in making good on his pledge of being responsible, moderate and solving real problems.

California's children have been suffering from decades of neglect. California's businesses, especially the high-tech computer industry, are suffering right now from a lack of well-educated workers.

It's obvious that California's voters will support progressive ideas, and nothing could show the public's good intentions better than passage of Proposition 1A's $9.2 billion in school construction bonds.

The truth is the public would support higher salaries for teachers in a minute if standards were set that made sure they were paying for better-qualified, harder-working teachers.

Reform of the school system will only come about when we stop collectivizing performance of students, teachers and administrators. Achievement comes from individual effort, individual performance and individual responsibility.

It's time that politicians in the city, the county and the state face up to the fact that the public is light years ahead of them.

The public is fed up with politics for politicians' sake. Californians want politics for the people's sake.