The federal government yesterday awarded Harvard a $7.7 million contract to start a center to study technology use in education, the first such institute in the country.

The Graduate School of Education will run the new center, which will serve as the government's chief research institute to determine how technology can be used to improve math, science, and computer education in U.S. schools, officials said yesterday.

The institute's founding is a response to national concern over public education, and math and science training in particular, said Alan Wilson, deputy director of the National Institute of Education (NIE), yesterday.

In April, a blue-ribbon Presidential committee reported that the quality of math and science education in the United States had fallen significantly in the last 26 years.

The National Commission on Excellence in Education also stated in its report, "A Nation at Risk," that the technology boom was not being adequately addressed by American schools.

Education Secretary Terrell H. Bell announced the NIE's five-year contract with Harvard yesterday. The NIE is the research arm of the Department of Education.

Harvard was selected for the project over MIT and Bank Street College in New York Although the University's proposal was the most expensive, the NIE felt Harvard had superior technological facilities and better contact with local school systems, Wilson explained.

The center will be housed in the Ed School's Gutnian Library, said Associate Dean Jerome T Murphy. He added that the library will open a new computer lab this week.

The contract comes in the wake of a new emphasis at the Ed School under Dean Patricia A Graham on improving teaching and public education. In the past year, the school has begun new programs for training math and science instructors a computer education curriculum, and run several seminars for high school administrators and teachers.

"I think that [the new center] is a great opportunity for the Ed School to work with school programs," Graham said yesterday. "It is very important that we use this money to help teachers become more effective."

Although the contract only runs for five years. Murphy, who coordinated the Ed School's final proposal, said he hopes to make arrangements with the booming local high-tech industry to false money to continue the project.

Harvard will keep halt of the funds to run its own center, but will subcontract the test to several other educational organizations Graham said. The other groups are the Cambridge School Department, the Educational Development Center in Newton, and the Educational Testing Service.

The city's schools will receive about in percent of the total contract and will use the funds to develop elementary and high school curriculums, said Assistant Superintendent Oliver Brown.

Two Ed School professors will head the new center, Graham said. Associate Professor of Education Gregory Jackson and Judah Schwartz, who has a joint appointment at Harvard and MIT, both have extensive knowledge of technology.

Both Jackson and Schwartz were in Washington yesterday and could not be reached for comment.

The technology institute will be one of 17 educational research facilities around the country supported by the NIE