Now that Mayor Bloomberg has won his fight in respect of social promotion — and it was a tremendous victory — the city awaits the report of the Zarb commission. The Court of Appeals’ decision in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case essentially requires New York taxpayers to pump more cash into the public school monopoly. The only hope lies with Governor Pataki and his Commission on Education Reform, which is due to issue its belated report this week.

Mr. Pataki declared in appointing the commission last fall that it should rethink the fundamental structure of education, not just how dollars are distributed, signaling that he would try to buy some overdue change with the money demanded by the courts. Mr. Pataki further raised our hopes last fall by filling his panel with partisans of tuition vouchers, which would give children trapped in squalid schools the freedom to walk away. Surely, a group chaired by the former head of the Nasdaq exchange, Frank Zarb, would see the value of market forces as a tonic for what ails public education.

Unfortunately, the early word from the Zarb commission, as reported in Friday’s Sun, is that it probably will not include a voucher program in its recommendation and is studying a mandate that would require New York City to spend more on its faculty. It may well make sense to increase teacher salaries, as a way of attracting higher-caliber individuals into the classrooms. But the money will be wasted unless the administration can reward good teachers with higher salaries and assign them where they are needed most — basic management tools that the current labor contract prohibits.

It should, moreover, be the mayor and the chancellor who decide what they can afford to pay, in negotiations with the United Federation of Teachers, and not Albany politicians addicted to the UFT’s campaign donations. City Hall fears the Zarb commission will try to shift part of the cost of complying with the court order to the city from the state, though Mr. Pataki no doubt reckons this is just deserts.

Mayor Bloomberg, after all, signed onto the Campaign for Fiscal Equity as a private citizen, and cheered its victories as mayor, even as Mr. Pataki suffered the political consequences for his brave stand against judicial meddling in education policy. Now that the plaintiffs are demanding a one-third increase in statewide spending on schools, including an additional $1.5 billion annually from the city’s coffers, the mayor seems to be suffering sticker shock.

In the end, it makes little difference whether the state or the city pays this unwarranted bill. The taxpayers’ pockets are equally picked either way, while the signs are that the Zarb commission will shrink from the opportunity at hand. A sage at the Foundation for Education Reform and Accountability, Brian Backstrom, argues that any reform plan that doesn’t include measures such as vouchers, merit pay, tenure reform, and a longer school day and longer school year will be “tinkering around the edges.”

With the July 30 deadline for compliance with the court order approaching, Mr. Pataki may believe that moderation is in order. Pro-spending forces outnumber him at the Capitol, and he may worry that pushing for true reforms, such as vouchers and merit pay, would lead to a stalemate and a court takeover of the school funding system. This is, indeed, an outcome to be dreaded, since it would hand a blank check to the judge handling the case, Leland DeGrasse of the state Supreme Court in Manhattan, who has already made it plain that he considers money a panacea for the schools. But Messrs. Zarb and Pataki will do a greater service for both children and taxpayers if they stand up to the education establishment — the Keystone Kops responsible for the present disaster — and chart a fundamentally new course. If they won’t, who will?