The Edison Project, a for-profit group with a new design for American public schools, will achieve significant gains in the academic achievement of students without raising the per student cost, two speakers said yesterday in a Graduate School of Education panel.

Approximately 80 people attended the Longfellow Hall discussion with Deborah M. McGriff, former general superintendent of Detroit public schools, and Stephen C. Tracy, former superintendent of New Milford, Conn. public schools. Both now work for the Edison Project.

The Edison Project, headed by former Yale University president Benno C. Schmidt Jr., will ally private in-dustry with public education through contracts with individual school systems to reshape curriculum and administration to an Edison Project plan.

"Public-private partnerships might be a way to save public education," McGriff said. The Edison Project plans to open its first school in the Fall of 1995. Edison Project officials are cuurently pitching their design to school districts across the country.

The Edison Project would organize instruction around teams consisting of approximately four teachers per 90 students, Tracey said. Teams would be grouped together for two to four years. Under this plan, a common group of students would work for an extended period of time with the same peer group and teachers, he said.

McGriff and Tracey stressed that under the Edison Project, teachers would make more administrative decisions that affect their pupils. The Edison Program would thus direct less money to school bureaucracy, Tracey said.

Other facets of the Edison Project include greater access to computers and databases for students and teachers and more instruction time, said Tracey.

In addition, there will be more accountability in the educational system, said McGriff. "A school board will drop our contract," if the project does not provide the services it promises, said McGriff.

Although Edison Project supporters say they will never service more than one percent of the country, the company hopes to raise the level of education in all American schools through competition, Tracey said.

About 50 students attended last night's talk. "I came because I wanted to finally hear the details of the Edison Project," said Brenda G. Matthis, a graduate student in the Harvard School of Education.

The talk was sponsored by the Harvard Forum on Schooling and Children.