It is an institution that spends $12 billion a year, more than almost every government in the world and more than the gross national product of many countries. It employs well over 100,000 persons, in some 1,200 physical locations. And it is an organization that has not been accountable to anybody. In sketching the parameters of the problem Mayor Bloomberg wasn’t talking about Microsoft. He was talking about the New York City public school system. At his press conference yesterday, the mayor brushed aside the suggestion that it was the prosecution of Microsoft that led him to choose the Clinton administration’s anti-trust chief, Joel Klein, to lead the city’s school system. But if it had been a factor, it would have been an exceptionally shrewd one. For many of the problems with New York’s school system stem from the arrogance of a monopoly.

Call it Mr. Klein’s biggest case. The mayor, at his press conference, made a point of the fact that Mr. Klein won nine of the 11 big cases he took on at the anti-trust division he took on. The mayor made much of Mr. Klein’s personal New York bona fides; he is a product of the public school system, and one who has risen to heights that make him all the more acutely aware of the gifts that a good public school can bestow. Our own encounters with Mr. Klein have been brief, but have given us the impression that he is both an exceptionally brilliant person and one who is extremely thoughtful and committed. In choosing Mr. Klein the mayor has clearly made a reach for quality.

Of course, a lot of these kinds of admiring sentiments were given with respect to Harold Levy, when he came in from the world of Citigroup to take on the city school system. He was quickly defeated, though often by his own errors. Mr. Klein will no doubt discover that his adversaries in reforming the system will make the Bill Gateses of the world look like pussycats. Or even ideological heroes in a way that Mr. Klein probably hasn’t perceived them before. But Mr. Klein comes into the school job under very different circumstances than his predecessor, largely as a result of the mayor’s leadership. And there is this difference, too. When he went up against Microsoft, many of us were rooting for Mr. Klein’s opponent. In the case of the campaign for school reform, we don’t mind saying that this is one case we hope he will win.