A rocky freshman year

David L. Brewer swept into his job as school superintendent last year brimming with charisma and management-speak. He evinced bravado about the transformation he would wreak in the district, but also naivete about the obstacles he would face -- and about his own shortcomings as a potential school leader.

His big ideas -- which included firing incompetent teachers, attracting investment from outside the Los Angeles Unified School District and launching a system of boarding schools for foster children -- were, and still are, attractive. And yet, one year into his tenure, he is not as far along on key goals as he ought to be. More troubling, he seems to have lost track of what those goals are, leaving the impression that he is succumbing to the district’s deadening bureaucracy and the focused opposition of its unions. As we were a year ago, we’re rooting for him while remaining uncertain he’s the man to pull it off.

Certainly, the retired admiral walked into a situation with its share of challenges. He was hired by a fractious and dysfunctional board as a coup against Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who was seeking substantial power over the district. Hiring a superintendent without the mayor’s input -- and an African American superintendent whom Villaraigosa could hardly criticize publicly -- was a deplorable act of racial politics, but it gave the board a short-lived victory. Then enough of the mayor’s school board candidates won in the last election to hand him a majority, and suddenly Brewer was reporting to a board that hadn’t hired him.

None of this is Brewer’s fault, but as a military man accustomed to a hierarchical structure in which orders are obeyed, he failed to foresee that he was taking over an organization -- we use the term loosely -- marked mainly by its diffuse powers, entrenched bureaucracy and layers of hostile politics. Brewer is many things, but he is not an artful politician in the way that, say, Roy Romer, his predecessor, was.

The result is that Brewer has stumbled into one defeat after another, each one weakening his stature and his respect before the board. He launches ideas without laying the groundwork and then too quickly waves the white flag when rebellion erupts. His talk of pulling bad teachers out of the classroom disappeared first. He -- quite rightly -- told the board that the district could not afford health benefits for its part-time cafeteria workers; the board ignored him. Now his plan for a separate mini-district for low-performing schools has fallen apart after the teachers union got riled up and several schools flatly refused to participate.

Brewer is an intelligent and articulate man who in a year has mastered the education lingo. In a visit this week with The Times’ editorial board, he clearly understood that improving learning is more complicated than simply offering better schooling. It also requires stronger families and safer communities. What he doesn’t seem to understand is that he has neither the resources nor the time to tackle all of these at once. It’s disconcerting to hear his fragmented ideas about remedying all urban problems simultaneously.

No one could have expected, in fairness, to see classrooms transformed within the first year. And through no fault of his own, Brewer inherited a payroll disaster created by the Romer administration that has taken up considerable amounts of his time. Still, what Brewer could and should have done by now is develop a focused and clearly articulated set of priorities for instruction, and a jargon-free action plan for getting there. Instead, he offers a jumble. He correctly lists improved instruction and curriculum as the core elements of a good education, but then rambles on about leadership classes for all teachers because some of them will one day be principals. Then he’s on to the partnerships he’s forging to get children safely to and from school and to provide them with more social and health services. Meanwhile, what does good teaching look like? The superintendent seems no closer to being able to answer that question.

Brewer came to the job with no real background in education. That’s not a problem in itself; many good school leaders have come from other arenas. Recognizing his weakness in this area, though, he should have a chief academic officer in place by now. His first candidate for the position didn’t take it, but that was in early June, and arguably the district’s most important managerial spot remains unfilled.

Brewer has the thoughtfulness and passion to create change, but if he is to succeed, we’d suggest new priorities: Exchange your management jargon for clear talk about how real teachers will instruct real kids. Pick your battles and then stick to your guns. Recognize the considerable forces standing in your way -- school board politics, racial politics, entrenched bureaucrats, union intransigence.

Finally, this: The time for rumination is over. Every June, the district graduates nearly 30,000 young people, sending them into the world without the benefit of the education that is their birthright. Every year of study is another tragedy of missed opportunity. Brewer and the district owe the children of this region a high-quality education. They owe it now.