Thursday, August 7, 1997; Page A22

IN FEBRUARY'S State of the Union address, President Clinton challenged states to go further than the familiar call to adopt high education standards. "By 1999, every state should test every fourth-grader in reading and every eighth-grader in math to make sure these standards are met," he said. Six months later, the bureaucracy is revving up to create the envisioned voluntary national test, but the plan has bogged down in politics and process.

National testing for individual students of the type used by our trade competitors in Europe and Asia is a good idea. Currently, the only available "nation's report card" is the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a sampling of student achievement in groups. Families and schools need uniform measures with which to identify a child's academic weaknesses and plan improvements. The entire movement for national standards over the past decade always included the eventuality of some kind of assessment, discussed most frequently as curriculum-tailored and voluntary.

But so far the Education Department has attracted only six states to its testing plan. Home-schooling advocate Michael Farris warns that testing is "the last nail in the coffin of local control." Some in the minority community fear testing merely will embarrass low-performing students. The most active opponents – rallying around House Education chairman Bill Goodling (R-Pa.) – will seek in September to block funds for development of testing. They see it as a power grab by the Education Department and educators whom they accuse of ignoring Congress and favoring hazy "critical thinking" skills rather than a back-to-basics philosophy.

The "process" question is whether the tests should be created and run by a contractor, an approach the Clinton team is already well into preparing, or whether a new statute should be enacted to permit administration of the tests by the National Assessment Governing Board, the politically independent board that runs the NAEP tests.

That's hardly a debate to stir the hearts of parents, educators and local officials who approach the issue with a vocabulary of test scores, achievement and progress. Rather than cut off funds, Congress should sit down and work with the administration to come up with a suitable role for the governing board. Given that many states are waiting to see some pilot testing before committing, there is more interest in testing than Mr. Clinton's meager score of six takers would indicate.