Education Reform Debate Divides Governors : Politics: Democrats fear the White House will control a proposed panel that would grade the states. Congress is pushing for a larger role.

Leaders of the National Governors’ Assn. struggled Saturday to resolve a partisan dispute that threatened to seriously set back their much-heralded plans for education reform jointly sponsored with President Bush.

At the heart of the disagreement is the worry among congressional Democrats and some Democratic governors that the present draft proposal for the makeup of an assessment panel to grade individual states on their progress toward reform would give too much influence to the Republican White House. This could lead, Democratic critics fear, to unfair report cards on reform efforts and political damage to their party.

The dispute surfaced here as the governors gathered for their annual summer conference, scheduled to officially open today with the release of a letter from House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) and Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.). The letter urges that the structure of the assessment panel be laid out by congressional legislation rather than a resolution by the governors’ association, as had been planned.

But with Congress involved, “we could be talking about setting things back a year, or two years,” complained Republican Gov. Carroll A. Campbell Jr. of South Carolina during a press conference called to release the latest report of the education task force he co-chairs. “I don’t know how long a bill will take,” added Campbell, a former congressman.

The task force headed by Campbell and Democratic Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas has been drafting plans for school reform since an “education summit” with Bush in September, 1989. The task force, which is scheduled to meet today, had been expected to adopt a proposal for a bipartisan panel to evaluate progress toward reform goals over the next 10 years.

The plan being contemplated by the White House and the governors called for a 12-member group, four appointed by the White House and four each from Congress and the governors’ association. Since the congressional and governors’ association representatives would be bipartisan, some Democrats feared that the White House, by appointing the other four, would be able to control the panel’s deliberations.

To deal with this problem, the Democratic governors arranged to take the unusual step of holding a private meeting of their own in advance of the full association meeting. The Democrats met Saturday afternoon in nearby Pascagoula, Miss.

After the two-hour meeting of about 15 Democratic governors, New Jersey Gov. James J. Florio described the mood as “a little feisty.”

In a telephone interview, Florio, who took office last November, said he had the sense “that these governors feel that they are being used by the Administration,” which some suspect is trying to take credit for improving the schools without making a substantial financial commitment to the effort.

According to Florio, many of the Democratic governors questioned the “good faith” of the Bush Administration in the reform effort and also felt that Congress should take a more active role in developing assessment plans.

The issue of education reform has been freighted with partisan political implications from the outset. The promise to improve the nation’s schools was a key plank in Bush’s 1988 campaign for the White House, when he vowed to become “the education President.” But Democrats have always questioned the seriousness of Bush’s intentions in that regard and criticized most of the proposals he has made to bolster the schools as demonstrating his unwillingness to back his rhetoric with adequate financing.

Still, until this weekend, the White House and the governors have worked together on education reform in harmony, outwardly at least. Iowa Republican Gov. Terry E. Branstad, in opening the press conference on Saturday, said: “Our mission has been to a build a consensus,” adding that “the process of consensus building is an effective way to initiate fundamental reform.”

But that mood appeared to be threatened by the letter from Mitchell and Foley, which was written Friday and addressed to Branstad and Democratic Gov. Booth Gardner of Washington, vice chairman of the governors’ association.

Their letter cited two education reform measures now moving through Congress as evidence of congressional experience in this field and urged the governors to adopt a resolution to work with the congressional leadership on “the final details” for enacting a national education goals assessment panel into law.

“If an educational goals assessment panel is to play a successful, meaningful role in the development of national educational policy,” the letter said, “it makes no sense to exclude from discussions about the creation of such a panel, the Congress of the United States, which establishes the majority of education policy for the federal government.”