The growing movement to deny Cathie Black, Mayor Bloomberg’s friend and choice to become New York schools chancellor has, I suspect, ground to a halt.

The New York State Education Commissioner, David Steiner, has appointed an advisory committee so heavily stacked with former employees of the Bloomberg administration’s education department and recipients of Bloomberg’s charitable largesse that it is hard not to draw the conclusion that the “fix is in.”

One can only conclude that Mr. Steiner:

· has decided, for whatever reason, not to challenge the mayor.

· fears that the mayor’s nominee is so controversial that he must have a near-unanimous vote of the advisory committee recommending Ms. Black’s appointment.

· calculates that unless the committee is top-heavy with “sure votes” for any choice of the mayor, it would reject Ms. Black.

I have heard that this is a “line in the sand” moment for the mayor and that he has telegraphed this to both Mr. Steiner, and the chancellor of the state education department, Merryl Tisch, though what Ms. Tisch will do behind the scenes is difficult to predict. She has shown courage is challenging New York’s test scores, publicly questioning the results in 2009 when the mayor was running for reelection, reportedly enraging him, even though she held back on what should have been done back then, which is withhold that year’s results.

In any event, it is hard to conceive that a candidate possessing as thin an educational resume as Ms. Black would be considered if nominated by another mayor.

The saddest part of this story is that the meetings of the advisory committee to decide whether Ms. Black deserves a waiver from the statutory requirements will apparently by done in secret.

Under New York State’s Open Meetings Law, the deliberations of this panel should be open. Personnel matters can be held in executive session, but this is not a personnel decision. Any confidential information regarding Ms. Black’s previous employment — not much of a secret because of her high profile position in a public company — falls into the mayor’s purview in selecting her. This is merely a review of whether her professional qualifications can be considered as meeting the specific requirements outlined under state law, arguably a matter of public concern.

No doubt running New York’s schools requires a great manager, but not just any manager. The job requires a manager with a particular understanding of this field and its issues, such as curriculum and pedagogy. It is easy for professional managers to imagine that they can run a school or a school district, but quite another to actually do it.

Joel Klein, the non-educator who currently leads the school system, is being lauded as a transformational chancellor, but that assessment will be adjusted as the scale of the test results balloon comes into perspective. Test scores have barely budged, while school expenditures have skyrocketed.

It is widely acknowledged that now, with the impending absence of federal stimulus funds, major cuts will have to be made. But what should be cut? How do we more efficiently use resources and get positive educational results?

Compared with Ms. Black, Mr. Klein’s resume held far more promise. He had a long history of government service, right up to the White House. He had actually served, if briefly, as a classroom teacher and was himself a graduate of the New York City public schools. Ms. Black main qualification in education is that she sent her children to a private boarding school.

Now we’re being told by Oprah Winfrey, of all people, that Ms. Black is the best choice for the job.

Ms. Winfrey opened a small school for girls in South Africa that, by next year, is slated to grow to just 450 young women. This is a particular interest of Ms. Winfrey, who has often discussed being sexually abused as a child. But the school has been rocked by at least two sex scandals since the day it opened and has been mired in controversy. One school. Maybe it isn’t so easy, even for the well-meaning rich. Imagine running 1,400 schools with well over a million students.

I’m willing to give Ms. Black the benefit of the doubt. But hold the meeting of the advisory committee in public. Let’s hear what she and they have to say. No one is served by holding this deliberation in secret, certainly not the public or the children attending our schools. Ultimately, it will ill serve Ms. Black — and Mr. Steiner as well.

Mr. Wolf is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.