EDITORIAL ROMER WIMPS OUT SELF-SERVING UNIONS STILL CALL THE SHOTS IN THE LAUSD.

FOR years, concerned Los Angeles residents struggled to elect a Los Angeles Unified School District board that wasn't owned or indebted to the teachers' and administrators' unions.

The goal was to put kids first and turn around a failing system. But now that an independent, reform-minded board is in place, nothing has changed.

Most of the board members might be free-thinking and independent, but Superintendent Roy Romer has yet to show the guts to stand up to the unions. He bullies the board members and his staff, but his knees buckle every time the self-serving unions challenge him.

On Wednesday, under union pressure, Romer backed off from a planned survey of academic assignments in fourth-, seventh- and 10th-grade LAUSD classrooms. The purpose of the survey was to measure what educational approaches are being used, how effective they are and how they can be improved.

Given the dismal test scores of upper-grade LAUSD students, the need for such comprehensive analysis is obvious, but the unions didn't like it one bit.

The unions don't much like anything that might achieve even a small measure of accountability. They complained that filling out the paper work was too taxing, and that the survey was a back-door way to - shudder - evaluate faculty performance.

So the obstructionist union big-wigs instructed the rank and file to ignore the survey altogether.

United Teachers Los Angeles officials told teachers not to fill out the survey unless ordered to do so, in writing, by their principals. Associated Administrators of Los Angeles followed suit by advising principals not to issue any such orders to their teachers, unless forced to by higher-ups.

So did Romer issue the order? Of course not. He wimped out, pulled back the survey and postponed it indefinitely.

It's not the first time he's wimped out to the unions. During contract negotiations, Romer gave away massive pay hikes (15.5 percent for one year). He got nothing in return, and the folly of his action will soon be felt because the recession and Gov. Gray Davis' mismanagement of state finances will soon leave LAUSD unable to pay its bills.

Despite his giveaway, Romer still can't get teacher or administrator unions to cooperate to improve the quality of education. He can't even get teachers to tell him what they're doing in the classroom or principals to shed some light on what's going on in their schools.

The unions still call the shots.

That puts school reform back where it started, under the thumb of labor bosses who care more about their own power than school kids and quality education.

What the LAUSD needs now more than ever is strong leadership, but it's not getting it from Romer.