EDITORIAL BOOSTING THE LAUSD DISTRICT MUST LEAVE NO (OLDER) CHILD BEHIND.

GOOD news continues to come out of the Los Angeles Unified School District. In primary education there are signs of real progress, improvement and hope.

But for the older students attending middle and high schools that are trapped in the culture of failure, the prospects remain bleak.

The numbers tell the tale of two school districts.

Throughout the LAUSD, nearly nine out of 10 elementary schools meet or beat state academic targets. But at the junior high level, the success rate drops to less than half. Among high schools, it's a dismal one of five.

Clearly the new, higher standards the district expects of its primary schools, teachers and students have yet to be applied to the upper levels.

The LAUSD's social-promotion policy is a case in point. District schools held back only 466 eighth-graders last year, compared with the 5,634 second-graders. At the upper grades, success isn't a precondition of moving on. Schools just pass students along, whether they're learning or not.

LAUSD Superintendent Roy Romer says not to worry. Last year, the district focused its efforts on rehabilitating primary schools, but this year it will turn its attention toward secondary education.

It would be nice, of course, if the district were able to take a more holistic approach, and tried educating all of its students in a given year. But we should be grateful for small favors. Any improvement, after years of practically none, is a welcome change.

The real question is whether Romer can make good on his promise to turn secondary education around. In past incarnations, the effort to rebuild the LAUSD focused entirely on the youngest students, who, unlike their older peers, hadn't already been set back by years of inadequate education.

In 1998, district officials decided to start with the first grade and turn around the LAUSD year by year, as that first class passed from grade to grade. By the time the kids graduated in 2000, it would be a whole new LAUSD, top to bottom.

It never quite turned out that way, and another generation of LAUSD students suffered for it.

The challenge facing LAUSD officials is to duplicate the success they've achieved at the elementary level in the higher grades - and fast. Otherwise, the young students who are now thriving will soon move on to schools that will fail to educate them, and the older students will, like too many before them, pass through the system without getting a shot at a decent education.

It would be inexcusable to write off another generation in the name of go-slow, piecemeal reform, especially during a time of such promise.