As public education claimed ever-larger shares of the state budget and the voting public's consciousness in the 1990s, it naturally claimed an ever-greater role in Capitol politics.

Two governors, Republican Pete Wilson and Democrat Gray Davis, positioned themselves as take-charge managers of the state's immense, much-troubled and largely unaccountable education system, becoming deeply involved in the allocation of school funds and offering what they described as vitally needed "reforms."

Wilson's big school idea was reducing class sizes in lower elementary grades on the popular presumption -- never proved, incidentally -- that having fewer kids in a classroom would improve their performance. Davis sought a series of carrot-and-stick proposals that would, he contended, goad teachers and administrators into improving the academic performance of their young charges.

Whether either of these two very expensive nostrums has had, or will have, any commensurately positive effect is still unclear. But it is very clear that they had some negative side effects.

Wilson's class-size reduction had the effect of shortchanging students in grades not affected by the program. Davis' program, meanwhile, encouraged educators to neglect or even eliminate classes that had no direct test score payoffs -- industrial arts being one conspicuous casualty -- and there is anecdotal evidence that under pressure, some teachers and administrators manipulated the system to report higher-than-justified test scores.

The Wilson and Davis programs share one trait: an assumption that a Big Daddy in Sacramento (neither of whom had any children, incidentally) could devise a one-size-fits-all fix for what ails education, notwithstanding the fact that California, including its kids, is humankind's most complex and diverse society.

There's a new governor in town, and this one not only has kids of his own but has demonstrated a years-long commitment to children and their education. And Arnold Schwarzenegger is bringing a fresh approach to the minefield of education politics, one rooted in reality, flexibility and local control, rather than the Sacramento-knows-all attitudes displayed by his predecessors.

Clues to the new attitude are found in Schwarzenegger's proposed 2004-05 budget and in what he and education adviser Richard Riordan -- who made school reform his hallmark as mayor of Los Angeles -- are saying.

Several features of the education budget merit special mention:

* Consolidating 22 "categorical aid" allocations into $2 billion in block grants to local schools, thus beginning to reverse an out-of-control tendency of legislators to create untouchable pots of educational pork;

* Giving teachers, principals and parents more authority in school district budgeting; and

* Raising fees and capping enrollment at the two four-year college systems, and redirecting some of their state money to the much-neglected community college system, thus encouraging more students to obtain lower-division instruction at the latter.

There are other proposals pending, and it's clear that Riordan is attacking the job of making schools better with the same enthusiasm that he exhibited in Los Angeles and that Schwarzenegger demonstrates on everything.

Riordan is talking up reform along the lines of the Edmonton, Alberta, school system, which turned much of the power over the allocation of resources to principals and teachers -- a huge step that would not only reduce the state's role in dictating financial and educational policy, but that of entrenched local school bureaucracies.

One version of the reform would allocate shares of school money to individual students -- varying according to their status and needs -- and put public schools in competition for their patronage, a version of the much-debated "voucher" system that conservatives embrace and liberals and teacher unions hate.

It's even possible that should such flexibility and accountability make its way into the system, it would bring settlement to the lawsuit that the ACLU filed a few years ago against the state, alleging that the interests of poor children were being sacrificed. Those poor children and their parents would be empowered, not treated as chattel.