The latest tactic in the effort to block school reform in the city is aimed at one of Chancellor Joel Klein’s deputies, Christopher Cerf. He was asked at a parents meeting last week about whether he had a financial interest in a for-profit education company, Edison Schools. Mr. Cerf said he didn’t, but, without misrepresenting anything, failed to say he’d given up his warrants in the company only the day before. Instead he referred his interlocutor to his financial disclosure forms. The story was thoroughly reported in the Times on Friday, but an editorial in the Times the following day missed the point, suggesting somehow that Mr. Cerf had dodged a forthright disclosure of his financial holdings.

On the contrary, Mr. Cerf has made all his financial disclosures and then some, and it’s important that the jibes at Mr. Cerf be seen for what they are. For he happens to be a triumph of Mr. Klein’s campaign to bring excellence into the leadership of the education department. Mr. Cerf is one of the brightest lawyers of his generation, having clerked on the appeals bench for Skelly Wright and then on the Supreme Court for Justice O’Connor. He was in a position to make millions in the private sector, but, inspired by what was happening in New York, threw in with Messrs. Klein and Bloomberg.

It’s not a matter of his having sold stock in Edison Schools the day before he was asked about it. What he actually did was forgo — he gave away — warrants for Edison Stock that could have been, someday, worth millions. He had no dealing with Edison in his work for the Department of Education. But he wanted to go the extra mile in exchange for a clean field in public service. Which of his or Mr. Klein’s critics has ever made that kind of sacrifice in order to be unencumbered to work within our school system?

Mr. Cerf is but one of a growing cadre of idealists Mr. Klein has recruited. The aide leading the work on accountability — meaning, standards and assessment — is James Liebman, who clerked on the Supreme Court for Justice Stevens, spent many years at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and became a professor at Columbia Law School. Robert Gordon, who was at the top of his class at Yale Law School and clerked for Justice Ginsberg, and worked in the Clinton White House, has joined the Department of Education to work on what the DOE calls fair financing and resources allocation. None of these individuals is a conservative ideologue or leftist theoretician. They are all Democrats whose main mark is that they are practical, idealistic, and capable of earning radically more outside of public service than within the school system.

Nor are these three the only such individuals in the Klein effort. The chancellor signaled early that he was going to break the mold, bringing in Caroline Kennedy to lead the effort to marshal private charitable contributions to supplement the public commitment to education reform. No one is suggesting that the enormous task of reforming the school system can be done without, or in spite of, the career education officials — or even the union. There are still debates to be had on curriculum, vouchers, and the like. But school reform is a big enough job that the best outside talent will be needed, too. The right move for the city is to be encouraging and inspiriting these individuals, not playing gotcha with them when they forsake private gain for the opportunity to help us all.