WHEN WILL WE LEARN SCHOOL-REFORM PLAN?

Byline: DOUG LASKEN Local View

THERE is a negative connotation attached to the concept of ``second- guessing.'' But what else are you supposed to do with a guy who claims grandiose goals but never spells out his methods for achieving them?

I'm talking, of course, about Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who will take over the Los Angeles Unified School District on Jan. 1. Villaraigosa has promised to lower dropout rates, raise test scores, get rid of underperforming teachers and trim the bureaucracy. But he has spelled out no proposals for achieving these goals.

The public is left, then, with second-guessing as the default position.

Villaraigosa intends to choose three high-school clusters, out of the district's 60, to personally oversee. He will shower those clusters with money and attention and will probably achieve a measure of success, if only as a result of the Hawthorne effect, named for the 1924 study of factory conditions that found that attention from management per se was enough to increase productivity.

But what are the mayor's intentions with the other 57 clusters, the other 95 percent of the district?

We may have a clue in last week's appointment of Marshall Tuck, president and chief operating officer of Green Dot Public Schools -- a charter-school company -- to work under Deputy Mayor Ramon C. Cortines, the former district superintendent now charged with facilitating mayoral takeover.

For those who have been following the district's evolution, Tuck's appointment is stunning. Charter high schools -- limited to 500 students each and free of the district's massive and stifling bureaucracy -- have been siphoning off students from struggling L.A. high schools for several years. Ten Green Dot campuses now operate around district high schools.

Charter schools may do some good for their students, but they are not considered a success story for the district, or for the teachers union, which does not automatically represent Green Dot teachers. Nor has Villaraigosa made turning over the district to the private sector the linchpin of his reform movement, which makes sense. He has pledged to improve the district, and the charter movement is designed to replace the district.

Which brings us back to the conundrum of the mayor's intentions.

If the mayor is reaching out to the charter movement, perhaps he intends not so much to improve the 57 clusters outside his largesse, as to dump them on Green Dot and other charter companies.

Green Dot certainly seems primed to accept the challenge, with a $10.5 million gift last week from L.A. philanthropist and onetime district supporter Eli Broad to build 21 more charters. Green Dot founder and chief executive Steve Barr is reported to be ``pretty fired up.''

What a win-win situation this could be: The mayor is off the hook for promising the impossible, and Green Dot makes a major cash killing.

Not to suggest that this scenario would be totally bad. There is a lot to be said for small campuses, and the district certainly has proved to be a sluggish behemoth. But if there's any validity to the scenario outlined here, it's another blow to the already moribund American commitment to honesty in public policy.

Is it too much to ask that our public officials speak honestly? We have been asking that question of the federal government, which seems incapable of explaining the purposes of the current war in clear terms. We should ask the question of our own city government, too.