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 York's
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 O'Neill Zimmerman, one of the two regular "nay" votes
on the five-member 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.