A new solution for extinguishing one of this budget season’s fiercest battles is emerging: delay.

At issue is a revision to the budget that would explicitly ban school boards, and Mayor Bloomberg’s Department of Education, from using student test score data to determine whether a teacher is granted tenure.

The United Federation of Teachers supports the language, saying that judging teachers based on test scores is unfair, but the Bloomberg administration has fought back, saying the city needs to be careful when deciding to whom it grants tenure, which makes it very difficult for a teacher to be fired.

Chancellor Joel Klein has visited Albany to lobby lawmakers against the language, and Mr. Bloomberg added to his case yesterday, condemning the effort during an appearance at a Crown Heights church. “All of us are judged on whether or not we do a good job. And to not judge teachers the same way, it’s an insult to the teachers,” Mr. Bloomberg said.

The standstill between two powerful groups, the Bloomberg administration and the union, could be avoided with a compromise, state Senator Bill Perkins of Harlem suggested yesterday. His idea: Delay making a decision until after the budget season.

“There’s a concern about, where did this come from?” Mr. Perkins said. “I think it should be looked at as a separate question, on its merits.”

In Crown Heights, Mr. Bloomberg appeared to support a delay.

“It’s an issue that has had no hearings and no light of day,” he said. “I think it’s time the legislature start focusing on the economics in the budget, and if they want to get involved in other things, do it in the appropriate manner, in the light of day when everyone can see what is going on.”

The United Federation of Teachers president, Randi Weingarten, is denying accusations that she played a role in revising the language, though she said she supports a change.

Ms. Weingarten said the new language would not take rights away from school boards. “In fact, it’s the mayor who is trying to change the policy to shift all the responsibility for the education of our children to the shoulders of teachers at the same time he is cutting the education budget,” she said.

If a decision on the language is delayed, opposition to the union’s favored change will likely survive. The executive director of the lobbying group Democrats for Education Reform, Joseph Williams, said that, if passed, such a change would be “the beginning of the end of public education.”

Mr. Bloomberg, speaking about his education policies, made a remark that raised eyebrows: “We are doing the things, I think, that if Dr. Martin Luther King was running the New York City school system, he would have done. And I think that if you were running the New York City school system, you would have done.”

Mr. Perkins, who said he received phone calls yesterday from constituents concerned by the remarks, called the comparison to King “arrogant” and “an insult.” He said the claim was insulting “especially when you realize that, within the community, there’s a great deal of anger and disappointment at how the schools have been functioning under this administration.”

Mr. Perkins added: “Parents have felt left out of the process, and they’ve felt that the schools are not measuring up. In fact, frankly, folks are fleeing the public school system.”

A City Council member of Brooklyn, Letitia James, said, “To invoke Dr. Martin Luther King’s name, given that a significant number of the schools in Crown Heights do not have computers, do not have science labs and math labs, is really an affront to the vision of Dr. Martin Luther King.”