The schools chancellor, Joel Klein, may have earned a reputation as a trustbuster when he battled Microsoft for the Justice Department, but he is starting to show monopolist thinking now in the case of the city’s schools. His remarks yesterday suggesting vouchers don’t make much difference in New York suggest that he is a little over his head, at the moment, in the struggle for school reform in this state. Our Anna Schneider-Mayerson quotes Mr. Klein on page one today dismissing vouchers as a “sadly mistaken hypothesis” for curing what ails our schools. Mr. Klein went on to oppose even choice within the public school system, stressing that President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act is intended to improve, not eliminate, failing schools, and casting doubt on whether students would be able to leave those schools.

As reported in yesterday’s Sun, Brian Morrow, a superintendent in the office of the deputy chancellor for teaching and learning, Diana Lam, argued that even choice within the public school system would be difficult to achieve since “schools are running at capacity or better and they’re unable to provide space.” Mr. Klein echoed that sentiment yesterday while at a fundraiser in Greenwich Village where he remarked on the plight of children in failing public schools who wish to attend better public schools, as is their right under the No Child Left Behind Act. “The solution is not going to be that kids go to those schools,” meaning the schools that are doing well, but instead that “We have got to fix those schools,” meaning the schools that are failing. Mr. Klein seems prepared to consider all approaches but competition.

This all comes at a time when the state attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, is starting to think of new approaches. A deputy counsel to the attorney general, Avi Schick, wrote a piece for Slate.com outlining ways in which proponents of vouchers could overcome states’ Blaine amendments, relics of the anti-Catholic know-nothing era. Speaking recently to The New York Sun, Mr. Schick said he wasn’t optimistic about the prospect of vouchers in New York. He said that if people want choice in education in New York, the best route to take would be a campaign for tax credits. But at least the AG’s office is working on ways to get over the state constitutional hurdles.

Hard as the campaign for vouchers may be, it is made only harder when Mr. Klein waves a white flag before the teachers union during the first month of school. The chancellor’s insistence that children will not be able to leave failing public schools not only goes against the spirit of the No Child Left Behind Act, but may not even reflect an accurate assessment of capacity. Not that Mr. Klein can’t think boldly. Witness his plan to award merit pay to district superintendents. The right move for him in his early months is to be strong and not permit himself to get cowed by the advocates of the status quo.