EDITORIAL WHAT'S THE PLAN? IT'S TIME FOR MAYOR TO COME CLEAN ON SCHOOL REFORM.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has talked earnestly about school reform for two years. And Los Angeles has listened -- hungry for some hope in the face of years of failure.

The mayor lost his bid for partial control of the Los Angeles Unified School District in court, but now he has full control of the school board itself within reach.

That's why he must spell out right now what he intends to do if he wins and demonstrate that his school board candidates and board members are 100 percent behind his plan.

The public's patience is waning. The time for abstract concepts about education reform is over. Teachers, parents and voters deserve to know what's at stake in this election. Everyone knows what we've got with the LAUSD -- decades of mediocrity -- but we don't know how Villaraigosa intends to change that.

The debate on school governance has gone on for three decades, and little has changed. Centralized authority, clusters, mini-districts -- the results are the same: high dropout rates, low student achievement.

Parents are as disconnected from the schools as ever. Teachers are still underpaid, and there's still a bloated bureaucracy. There's still no accountability.

Nothing has changed because, for all the debate over governance, it's a policy problem.

So this would be the time for the mayor to lay out his reform plan in detail. He doesn't just need to win this election; he needs a mandate for changing the culture of the LAUSD from top to bottom.

We've heard about cluster schools. We've heard about the six pillars of school excellence. We've heard about accountability. They're great abstract concepts, but what -- exactly -- will he do to achieve that?

Surely the mayor and his educational-reform team have a plan. Surely they know the steps they are going to take if they win a majority. We don't need a secret plan; we need a public debate. We want to hear the mayor's school board members, Monica Garcia and Yolie Flores Aguilar, and his two runoff candidates, Tamar Galatzan and Richard Vladovic, declare they are in full support of the mayor's plan.

Will teachers be empowered to raise the educational bar -- and their rate of pay? Will parents become partners in their children's education? How will the curricula change? And where's the money coming from to operate those "safe, small, clean schools" and to keep kids in school and out of gangs?

Villaraigosa stayed pretty much in the background in the primary election campaign. Now it's time for him to put his political capital on the line and sell his plan to a public fed up with low-performing schools.

Los Angeles cannot afford another generation of half-steps, failures and timid leadership.