EDITORIAL MISEDUCATION POLICY CLOSED SCHOOL LABS A BAD SIGN IN 21ST CENTURY.

FUTURISTS, great thinkers and filmmakers of the mid-20th century imagined all sorts of amazing gadgets and gizmos for the America of the new millennium.

They believed, by 2001 at least, everyone would take regular trips to the moon and use flying cars, that robots would take over domestic chores and food would come in pellets.

Reality turned out a little differently. But given the leaps and bounds that science made in that century - from the first shaky airplane flight to lunar landings, from gigantic computer mainframes to the Internet - it isn't all that surprising that people at midcentury would believe that the power of science and math would completely change our lives.

What might really have surprised them was how, given the country's resources and knowledge, that we could fail to pass it on. Yet, here in Los Angeles, that's exactly what's happening.

Even in a year when the country has been collectively fascinated with space and astrophysics, many students in the Los Angeles Unified School District won't get to learn about the science behind the space shuttles because the labs built to teach those things have been shut down in many schools.

A decade ago, the Applied Math and Science Academy labs were created to teach students about robotics and other technology - subjects they would no doubt need to know about to compete for jobs in this high-tech world. But $1 million worth of the computer equipment became broken from lack of maintenance and, apparently, interest.

This disclosure last week came on the heels of a local study by the L.A. Economy Project and the Milken Institute that found that the local work force has become increasingly unskilled - a trend that brings down the entire region's economy.

There's a reason why local tech jobs are being outsourced to such places as North Carolina and India. It's because those places have seen to it that students learn the math and science needed to compete for high-tech jobs.

If Los Angeles is to become a city of the 21st century, it needs to do a much better job of educating its children and retraining its adult population.

LAUSD Superintendent Roy Romer has the right idea about building new facilities and improving the ones the district already has. But the district also needs to focus on whether what it's teaching in these clean, bright places will be relevant when the Class of 2010 makes it to the work force.