EDITORIAL 'DANGEROUS' SCHOOL REFORM? LAUSD'S LACK OF URGENCY IS FAR WORSE THAN MAYOR'S PASSION.

ACCORDING to officials at the LAUSD, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's school-takeover plan isn't just misbegotten or ill-considered, it's "dangerous."

That's how Kevin Reed, general counsel for the Los Angeles Unified School District, described AB 1381 before a state appellate court panel last week. Should the bill go into effect, he warned, it will "open the door for really any entity that the Legislature decides is -- like the mayor, a decent guy with a lot of charisma and a lot of passion for what he wants to do -- to put that individual in charge of schools."

Horrors!

Imagine that: If the state's elected leaders could put someone with passion for education reform in charge of the schools. Why, we could get -- shudders -- education reform.

Most Angelenos, we suspect, wouldn't be horrified about this prospect. Indeed, it would be a big improvement. Because if there's one thing that the LAUSD most clearly now lacks, it's passion for reform.

A case in point is the district's plan for breaking up its way-too-large campuses, which, like its plan to reduce dropouts, is, on paper, a lot like the mayor's. But that's where the similarities end.

Whereas the mayor has gambled his political career on fixing things at the LAUSD, the district's plans for small learning centers and reducing dropout rates are rather late, lackluster efforts.

Having ignored the need for reform for 25 years, officials -- facing Villaraigosa's challenge -- now say they want to make big changes, but the pace of their efforts strongly suggests otherwise.

It's not "dangerous" to push for rapid change of a failed enterprise. What's dangerous is the LAUSD's lack of a sense of urgency, and its willingness to fiddle with long-standing problems rather than fix them.