HOW did we forget to do so many basic things?

How did we forget to pave roads? How did we forget to drill for oil? How did we forget to arrest the bad guys? How did we forget to marry the mother of our children? How did we forget to pay our bills? How did we forget to build cars? How did we forget to educate children?

In the relative short decades of my life, we have booted some of the simplest things men and women do. We have become so wired, so media savvy, so plugged in to celebrity gossip and a trillion shiny distractions, we’ve forgotten how to walk and chew gum.

Running a school is the civic equivalent of walking and chewing gum, but the evidence suggests we’re tripping over our feet and choking on the Hubba Bubba. Los Angeles continues to boot the three R’s. How in the world did the nation that put men on the moon forget how to put textbooks in classrooms?

The Daily News reported this week the dropout rate for the Los Angeles Unified School District shot up 10 percent during the 2006-2007 academic year. About 20,000 called it quits. This bucks the statewide trend and is nearly unique to Los Angeles. We’re failing while everyone else improves. The LAUSD is not just failing; it’s failing faster and harder.

Superintendent Ramon Cortines says, “This is completely unacceptable.” But we have accepted it. Many parents have accepted the ugly reality that L.A.’s schools are so fouled up they’ve pulled their kids out and spent the fortune necessary for private school tuition, or they’ve uprooted and moved to communities where failure is actually unacceptable rather than rhetorically unacceptable.

Every politician who comes down the pike is the “education” candidate. Every election is about “the future,” “the schools,” “the children” – and year after year the results are a national disgrace. We’re fed spin, blue-ribbon panels, consultants, photo-ops and bond measures. “If only we had more money…” If, if, if.

According to the new state reporting system, 43.5 percent of the district’s African-American students and 36.1 percent of the Latino students dropped out. A quarter of the white kids called it quits. And leave it to L.A. Unified to accomplish the impossible: The dropout rate for Asian students is up 40 percent! That’s not a typo.

Not every school is failing, and there are bright spots. The test scores for grade and middle schools are up, but those gains are wiped out in the failure factories known as LAUSD high schools.

Panorama High School is making a real effort to turn an abysmal past into a passable present. Populated by at-risk kids, many with criminal backgrounds, the challenge presented by the full menu of social dysfunction is enormous. Lost in the blizzards of grim statistics is an even grimmer nickname, “Bloodbath High.”

Panorama was known as “Bloodbath High” by the students, faculty and neighborhood. How did that slip under the radar? How did we allow Panorama to spiral so out of control it sounds more like the title of a Stephen King novel than a school? How is it possible Monica Garcia could be re-elected president of the LAUSD school board, unopposed?

When Ramon Cortines says the dropout rate is “unacceptable,” he’s engaged in wishful thinking. Here’s our reality: soaring dropout rates, “Bloodbath High,” hundred-million-dollar payroll boondoggles, tenured incompetents, shrinking enrollment with skyrocketing deficits, musical chair superintendents and endless political turf wars.

It is obvious the LAUSD is incapable of reforming itself. Taking a page from the successful rehabilitation of the LAPD, maybe it’s time for a consent decree for the LAUSD.