Administration Says It Lacks Funds To Support Goals Panel

By Julie A. Miller

SEATTLE--Bush Administration officials have informed the National Education Goals Panel that they do not have the money to carry out the panel's ambitious assessment agenda. The White House will have to forge an accord with members of the Congress to obtain such funding, the officials acknowledged.

That acknowledgment signals that lawmakers may have succeeded in using their control of the federal purse strings to gain influence over the goals panel's worker to retard it.

At a meeting after the National Governors' Association conference here last month, Milten Goldberg, the Education Department's director of research, told the panel that while the Administration had requested funds to support its America 2000 education initiative and the goals panel's activities, "at my last reading, I understand Congress is less than enthusiastic about providing...