EDITORIAL UNSOLVING PROBLEMS LAUSD STILL HAUNTED BY CULTURE OF FAILURE.

IF turning bad schools into good ones were as easy as signing an edict, the Los Angeles Unified School District would have been fixed long ago.

But ignorant of LAUSD history, Superintendent Roy Romer, a Colorado transplant, appears hell-bent on repeating it. Consider his recently revealed ploy for putting more credentialed teachers in South Central schools.

Rather than assess the needs of individual schools, consult local communities or run his ideas past the school board, Romer issued a secret, ill-considered decree to LAUSD minidistrict superintendents.

The directive instructed administrators to send all credentialed applicants for teaching positions to South Central minidistricts G and I, which happen to fall into areas largely represented by board President Genethia Hayes.

It's a simple response to a complex problem. Districts G and I have an inordinate number of teachers without full credentials, and their schools tend to rank among the bottom of the LAUSD.

But sometimes complex problems require more than a simple-minded solution. Not all schools in G and I are in desperate need of credentialed teachers, not all are failing as bad as schools in other areas. A school-by-school approach would be fairer.

So would a basic understanding of economic principles. It takes incentives - not edicts - to influence human behavior.

There are many reasons why teachers seek jobs outside South Central - they don't want to put up with the problems of discipline, insufficient family support and bureaucracy that plague inner-city schools. Romer's secret order does nothing to address these concerns, and thus nothing to deal with the root problems.

Teachers who don't want to work in inner-city schools will now simply file applications with districts outside the LAUSD, where there are plenty of openings.

A better way to attract teachers - rookies and veterans alike - to disadvantaged schools would be to sharply increase the ``combat'' pay increase they get for going there.

Perhaps if Romer hadn't tossed the teachers union a virtual no-strings-attached, 15.5 percent pay raise, the LAUSD would have the cash for such incentives.

But by handing a sweetheart deal to the union, Romer now finds himself resorting to ineffective edicts as his only hope for turning the LAUSD around.

One bad decision begets another.

That kind of leadership didn't work for his predecessors, and it won't work for Romer, either.