Fran Zimmerman

Think of Alan Bersin as Giuliani West.

Like the former Mayor of New York City, the reform-minded San Diego schools chief is a Brooklyn boy and former U.S. prosecutor. Also like Rudy, he's shown what a healthy dose of bull-headedness can do: He is undertaking what some observers believe is the most important urban school-reform effort in the country.

These columns have touted other urban reform attempts, especially those using vouchers or privatization. But what makes Mr. Bersin's San Diego overhaul distinctive is that he is trying to reform public schools from within. He is a lifelong Democrat and friend of Bill Clinton's since they were Rhodes Scholars together. If Mr. Bersin can't reform public elementary and high school education, it is probably unreformable.

The focus of his program is simple: the classroom. One of his first moves was to hire Anthony Alvarado, who as superintendent of New Yorles ethnically and economically diverse District 2 had boosted test scores dramatically. Mr. Alvarado's San Diego program is heavy on the basics -literacy and math -and testing that aims to measure performance against standards and not on a curve.

Mr. Alvarado has also pushed to boost resources devoted to teacher development, to $60 million from about $1 million four years ago. Principals have been encouraged to get out of their offices and into the classrooms to see what their teachers are doing. In an early signal that he was serious, Mr. Bersin sacked 15 principals who weren't going along with the program.

This- has made Mr. Bersin the political target of the teachers union, which has long understood that its best play is the waiting game. When Mr. Bersin first assumed office, the head of the local union bet $ 1,000 that he'd outlast Mr. Bersin. The odds were on the union boss's side; the average stint for a big-city school superintendent is roughly 23 months. The opposition has also fought Mr. Bersin in what Ron Ottinger, president of the school board, calls a "disgusting" manner.

Specifically, Frances ONeill Zimmerman, one of the two regular "nay" votes on the fivemember school board, is enamored of Nazi allusions. Her Web site refers to Mr. Bersin's plan as "the Anschluss." In an interview, she said "the imagery around the district is all of Hitler and repression and Anschluss and fascism"; and one of her letters refers to one of San Diego's classes as a "remedial stalag." A recent teachers union demonstration included a large sign reading "Hail Fuhrer Bersin." This rhetoric isn't an accident; it has the deliberate purpose of making Mr. Bersin seem morally illegitimate to parents who aren't paying close attention.

The good news is that it doesn't seem to be working. The San Diego school board just extended Mr. Bersin's contract another four years, and his reforms are starting to bear fruit. Reading and math scores are up, and across ethnic and racial lines. A number of schools have risen from the academic basement. And private foundations, including the one run by Bill Gates's father, have voted their approval with multimillion-dollar grants.

Even some teachers seem to have had enough; the best realize that they may benefit more from a system that rewards excellence. Only three years ago the union turned out 3,000 for a picket. But at Mr. Bersin's recent state-of-the-district address at Kearny High School, only 150 teachers answered the call.

We still have our doubts that urban education reform is possible without competition from school choice. But in a rational world, you'd think the unions would work with Mr. Bersin to prove it is possible to reform without vouchers or privatization. Judging from San Diego, the teachers unions have long since left any rational world.