One of the queries we are being subjected to of late is why we have been so supportive of Mayor Bloomberg and his schools chancellor, Joel Klein, in their efforts to manage the city’s government-run schools. After all, Messrs. Klein and Bloomberg have by now assembled a string of distinguished, heavyweight critics who include a number of persons we admire a great deal: a professor at New York University, Diane Ravitch; a writer for City Journal, Sol Stern; our own columnist Andrew Wolf, and the president of the United Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten.

The complaints of these critics vary, but they include the Bloomberg-Klein curriculum selection, the mayor and chancellor’s choices of senior management, their use of consultants, their expenditures, and their efforts to tell teachers how to run their classrooms, right down to how to arrange the desks. Not to mention that Messrs. Bloomberg and Klein are not professional educators. Each of these critics is a savvy observer, which is why we have devoted some effort and space to airing their views in the columns of the Sun. They all no doubt have the interests of children at heart.

But what is the sense of winning the historic victory of mayoral control of the city’s schools and then not giving the mayor and his chancellor some room to manage the schools as the mayor wishes? Mr. Bloomberg has asked to be judged for his performance in managing the city’s schools. He will – unlike any schools chancellor in recent memory in New York City – have to face the voters in less than a year in a bid for re-election. Until then, by our lights, our instinct has been that he deserves to be permitted broad latitude in running the schools as he wishes.

The critics reply that in the span of a four-year mayoral term, too many children can fail to learn how to read or add or subtract. If Mr. Bloomberg loses in November, he can retire to Bermuda in comfort. Mr. Klein, with his training (and record) as a lawyer and business executive, will no doubt find work elsewhere. But those children who missed learning to read or do math will be in rough shape.

This, though, strikes us as reason not to further hamstring the authority of Messrs. Bloomberg and Klein, but as reason to give them the tools they want to manage as they please. Mr. Klein has asked for a removal of the cap on the number of charter schools that can be established in New York State, increasing the number of students who attend schools that must compete for students. Messrs. Bloomberg and Klein have also been pressing for changes to the absurd work rules in the union contract that make it difficult to fire teachers for poor performance or to reward individual teachers for excellent results. The reason Messrs. Bloomberg and Klein are micromanaging how teachers act in the classroom is that the contract makes it nearly impossible for them to fire bad teachers or reward good ones.

Or to sum it up, in the current school fight, the logic is to go with management. It doesn’t mean that one has to oppose the right of teachers to bargain collectively. But in the end, the mayor deserves not just responsibility but authority, subject to a final decision by the voters. If a mayoral candidate wishes to engage Mr. Bloomberg on these issues, so much the better. The only improvement we can think of to this system would be for the mayor and chancellor to increase their bargaining leverage with the union and the legislature by swinging behind school vouchers – a policy proposal that would give average- and low-income parents the authority to manage their own household decisions in respect of education, the same as wealthy families, even more frequently than every four years.