Behind the budget battle, Governor Paterson’s public school reform position is particularly scrutinized.

The discussion revolves around whether Mr. Paterson is pro-school choice, if he likes vouchers, and how far he will go to promote charter schools. Some national advocates are certain that he’s Friedmanesque in his school stance.

“David Paterson is a passionate advocate for expanding opportunities for disadvantaged schoolchildren through school choice, including private school options,” the former president of the Alliance for School Choice and arguably the nation’s leading educational-choice advocate, Clint Bolick, said. “He is unafraid to stand up to special-interest groups that block opportunities for children who need them.”

Others, as this paper has reported, are not so sure. Randi Weingarten said the other week that she thought choice reformers were “in some ways trying to put words in [Mr. Paterson’s] mouth.”

Wherever the governor falls on the school reform continuum, he certainly is light years ahead of the majority of the state’s Democrats — and, for that matter, the state’s Republicans.

The evidence is not overwhelming, but it is not insignificant either: Mr. Paterson voted in support of charter schools while in the state Senate, and, while being no tub-thumper on the topic, he championed choice on different occasions, twice before the Alliance for School Choice annual retreats in 2005 and 2007 and also at last year’s Black Alliance for Educational Options African-American Elected Officials Conference, winning plaudits from voucher advocates across the country.

But how did a black Democrat from Harlem — who grew up among dyed-in-the-wool liberals like Mayor Dinkins and Rep. Charles Rangel — come to speak out in support of such an ostensibly conservative policy position as free market school reform?

Perhaps it was life experience. Growing up, young David participated in the most popular school choice program of all: having a caring family with the means to help. His parents recognized how his blindness affected his learning and moved the family to Long Island so that he could excel in a mainstream academic environment.

If that didn’t awaken Mr. Paterson to the wonders of school choice, then representing a lower income and mostly minority area of Manhattan, where reform of the public school system and the popularity of its six charter schools is on the minds of the majority of his constituents, could have done so.

Mr. Paterson’s challenge now will be to take his support of school choice to new heights through his policy prescriptions. He can find a blueprint just across the Hudson River, where reform is gaining in the deep blue state of New Jersey.

A lifelong Democrat who runs the successful E3 school choice group in Newark, Dan Gaby, referenced the city’s pro-school choice mayor, Cory Booker, a black Democrat, in his explanation for the possible sea change.

“What’s interesting here is that there is change in the Democratic Party all over the country,” Mr. Gaby remarked. “People like Paterson and Booker are the vanguard of this change. They see the hypocrisy in consistently winning the minority constituencies who have been faithful to them for decades, and then going to bed with their oppressors, the teachers’ unions. They can no longer be duplicitous. They know that this must change.” And New York, much like New Jersey, is ripe for such change.

Regarding the policies, Mr. Paterson could turn red-hot where Mr. Spitzer was just lukewarm in seeking private school tuition tax credits for families. He can also work to lift the arbitrary cap on the state’s charter schools which Mr. Spitzer rightly increased to 200 from 100 last year.

Further, the governor could break new ground by allowing religious organizations and the clergy to operate charter schools, like the wish of Harlem’s own Reverend Michael Faulkner of New Horizon Church Ministry. Or he could pioneer a path in education reform by launching pilot voucher programs in New York’s poorest districts, with public, private, and parochial schools participating.

Any of these changes will put Mr. Paterson on a collision course with the state’s powerful teachers’ unions, the true opposition forces to any and all school reform. This will test the mettle of the man, as he and his father, a former deputy mayor and former New York secretary of state, Basil Paterson, have been stalwart supporters and defenders of many of the Empire State’s largest labor unions.

Let’s hope that, in the next 33-and-a-half months, we witness Mr. Paterson’s strong support for real school reform. And, as we do, let’s hope also that he and others in his party can see charter schools, school choice, and other seemingly conservative policy principles for what they really are: vital tools through which our elected officials can empower parents and liberate the poor and minority kids unfairly trapped by our nation’s crumbling public schools.

Mr. DeSena was a domestic policy analyst for Mayor Giuliani’s presidential campaign.