There is a certain poetry to the move of the new Department of Education to the Tweed Courthouse. For the courthouse stands in the history of the city as a symbol of municipal corruption. This is on account of its namesake and progenitor, William Marcy Tweed. Coming to influence in the 1850s and falling from power in the 1870s, Tweed ran the city as a patronage machine for his own benefit and that of his cronies who were members of what was called the Tweed Ring. A writer of the era, quoted by the Edward Robb Ellis in his “The Epic of New York City,” defined a Tweed Ring as “a hard band in which there is gold all round and without end.” In practice, this meant that corrupt government officials would solicit and take bribes from contractors, artisans, and merchants looking to do business with the city and then parcel out lucrative goodies in return. The project that brought Tweed down was the construction of a courthouse that cost millions of dollars, some 90% of which went to graft. This is the symbol in which Mayor Bloomberg has insisted on headquartering the city’s schools.

Neither these columns nor anyone else is suggesting that Mr. Bloomberg, Governor Pataki, Chancellor Klein, or Randi Weingarten is corrupt. On the contrary, they are notably honest idealists. No doubt such a spirit infuses most of those who work under them in the DOE. None is getting rich on the public purse like Boss Tweed and the members of his ring, a band of politicians, contractors, and city officials implicated in the courthouse thievery and illuminated and lampooned by the father of modern political cartooning, Thos. Nast. But the very honesty and idealism of the current leadership makes all the more dramatic the growing frustration with the direction of education policy.

This started with Mr. Klein’s first days in office, when he complained that resources were scarce. This at a time when taxpayers were ponying up something on the order of $14 billion dollars for a school system to which many of them, rich and poor, don’t feel comfortable sending their children. The sense is compounded by Mr. Pataki’s sweetheart deal, which in the face of one of the worst fiscal crises in the history of New York City handed the teachers a pay increase that would cost a staggering $1.1 billion over the 30-month life of the contract. The deal got Mr. Pataki the hearty endorsement of the teachers union as he bids for a third term, and Mr. Bloomberg acceded to the deal in the course of his battle for control.

As a symbol of his commitment to change, Mr. Bloomberg decided to have the DOE vacate its quarters at 110 Livingston Street — which Mayor Giuliani once called “a symbol of a bloated bureaucracy in desperate need of systematic reform” and also once said he would like to “blow up” — and moved them into an edifice whose very purpose was to facilitate the lining of the pockets of Boss Tweed and the members of his ring. The fig leaf promised on the deal was that at least a school would be set up in the Tweed Courthouse, but this week even that little symbol went by the boards.

Meantime, as our columnist Andrew Wolf has pointed out, the city is starting to undertake studies, backed by private philanthropic funding, on how to improve the school system. But they are bankrolling a roster of familiar names, few of whom can be expected to advance the kind of radical reform of the school system for which many New Yorkers are hungering. Mr. Wolf has cited the involvement of such leftist critics of education as Norm Fruchter of New York University. He also cautions about Beth Lief and New Visions for Public Schools, which he calls part of New York’s “University Institutional Complex” — that is, groups that propose educational policies and then prosper through the awarding of the millions of dollars in contracts that go to execute them.

Mr. Klein has shrugged off the idea of such approaches as school vouchers, characterizing their flaw as that they would not solve the problems of the public monopoly. His recent comments ignored the fact that the issue addressed by vouchers is whether poor families can be given access to other educational choices the way rich families can. Educational policy in the city is proceeding as if the voucher movement didn’t exist. It has also failed to address publicly the bigotry that begat the Blaine amendment in the state. Further, the administration has betrayed the promise of a new school on the Upper East Side that would be a symbol of the idea that wealthy sections of the city, which pay so much in taxes, could actually be served by a public school.

Lastly, the city is proceeding as if the Congress had not passed a law called the “No Child Left Behind Act,” which, broadly put, is designed to give ordinary pupils the right to escape failing schools without delay and transfer to a school that is working. The new administration of the city’s schools seems as reluctant as the old, despite the new law. It’s not a case of personal corruption, but it is a case of hubris that would have brought a smile to the visage of William Marcy Tweed himself. The way things are going, people are going to start wondering what kind of cartoon Thos. Nast would draw were he to come back in a year or two. It wouldn’t surprise us were he to fetch up with a depiction of a New Tweed Ring Who Failed the People’s Children. And it might be captioned, as the above cartoon was, with a question about what happened to the people’s money.