California's education officials say they want to lure the best and brightest teachers to the state's poorest and most troubled schools. Too often, they have paid lip service -- or looked the other way -- when these schools became the home of last resort for teachers no one else wanted.

Last month, legislators took a small but important step to meet that commitment to low-achieving schools. In doing so, they ignored the opposition of the state teachers' union, which usually gets its way in Sacramento.

These schools in particular face a lot of pressure to raise test scores. Since they are being held accountable for results, principals deserve more power over hiring.

With the passage of SB 1655, now awaiting Gov. Schwarzenegger's signature, principals in those schools will no longer be forced to accept veteran teachers who use seniority rights for open positions. These schools will now be able to compete for teachers in the spring, when the best candidates are on the market.

Until now, job openings sometimes remained unfilled through the summer as veteran teachers weighed their options and exercised contractual rights. Sometimes, principals didn't list jobs until the last minute, for fear that teachers they didn't want would claim them.

Under the bill, sponsored by Sen. Jack Scott, D-Pasadena, principals in higher achieving schools will also gain more hiring discretion. Until April 15, veteran teachers will have preference for job openings in those schools. But after April 15, they will have to compete equally with other applicants.

Scott's bill could slow down the ``dance of the lemons'' -- the annual migration of a minority of veteran teachers who either were burned out or who didn't get along. They agreed to take voluntary transfers and gravitated to low-performing schools, where principals were desperate and parents less vigilant.

It's hard to know how widespread the problem is. But in a survey by the New Teacher Project, 21 percent of principals reported that a majority of teachers hired through voluntary transfers were unsatisfactory.

The New Teacher Project highlighted the problem in ``Unintended Consequences: The Case for Reforming the Staffing Rules in Urban Teachers Union Contracts,'' a national report last fall. California has become the first state to act on one of its key recommendations.

The better alternative to the dance of the lemons is an efficient, fair and impartial evaluation process in which the few worst teachers are more easily fired (without the district spending $100,000-plus in legal fees), and teachers needing improvement are given more opportunities to succeed.

SB 1655 could end up encouraging that process. Meanwhile, principals in low-achieving schools will benefit through an even start in competing for new hires.