Facing a court order to provide a “sound basic education,” Governor Pataki last year appointed a 16-member commission on education reform with a charge to report back to him by March 1 of 2004. One thing the commission tried, sensibly, to do is hire a research firm to have a look at the performance of the state’s schools. The firm the commission wanted to hire, Standard & Poor’s, is an established player in the field. Its School Evaluation Services group has worked for the states of Michigan and Pennsylvania. And under an agreement with the federal Department of Education and the Broad Foundation, within three years S&P will be providing data analysis to all 50 states, including New York.

Yet the state comptroller, Alan Hevesi, last month blocked the commission’s attempt to hire S&P. One would think that Mr. Hevesi would be interested in getting to the bottom of the “sound basic education” question. After all, he is an educator himself — a member of the Queens College faculty from 1967 through 1993.

The reason Mr. Hevesi gives for blocking the contract is the “potential” for a “perceived conflict of interest.”S&P gives the state credit ratings in connection with its bond issues, and Mr. Hevesi seems to think it shouldn’t therefore also be evaluating the state’s schools. A spokesman for Mr. Hevesi, David Neustadt, told us, “In the corporate arena, the firm that audits a company’s books should also not be hired for financial consulting. No one starts out with bad intentions but we’ve seen over time in the corporate world that bad things happen when the two are within the same entity.”

With all respect to Mr. Hevesi, this objection makes him look goofy. The state education reform commission is hardly Enron. There are plenty of other checks and balances at work. The commission’s work is being conducted amid a great deal of public attention, and its membership includes representatives of a variety of interests. The president of the United Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, whose members’ pay could be affected by the commission’s recommendations, is a member. Talk about your conflicts of interest.

The comptroller’s concerns about the “potential”of a “perceived”conflict of interest don’t extend to the state’s purchasing of millions of dollars in tests and textbooks from S&P’s parent company, McGraw-Hill. Mr. Neustadt says the textbooks purchases and the state’s bond rating are “completely unrelated.” Too bad he and his boss can’t apply that same reasoning to the state education reform commission’s hiring of the firm.

On Friday, the commission’s chairman, Frank Zarb, announced that S&P has been going ahead with its work despite Mr. Hevesi’s obstructionism, betting it will get compensated in the end, somehow, for the $1.2 million worth of work.

The managing director for S&P’s School Evaluation Services group, William Cox, told us, “We are confident that the analysis we perform and the tools we provide will be very helpful to all stakeholders, including those who are at this point reticent about the work and what it’s about.” Said Mr. Cox, “I don’t think that S&P has ever had — nor will ever have — any internal conflicts in providing different types of services to entities like the state of New York.”

We’re happy to see the work going forward. But it’s still worth noticing that it’s only going forward because of one company’s unusual willingness to take a risk and work for free on the chance that a way to pay will eventually be found. Here’s hoping the report comes in strong enough, and the education commission uses it well enough, that Mr. Hevesi will eventually see his error and reverse himself, or else suffer a political price for his obstructionism.