June 7, 1985

''I sometimes think it's more difficult to get an American Express card than a security clearance.'' - Senator William V. Roth Jr. of Delaware. [D18:6.]

Schools Chancellor Nathan Quinones said yesterday that the New York City Board of Education had sponsored a school for homosexual adolescents because it was the only way to provide them with the education that state law requires. ''These are youngsters who, in most instances, would never have been allowed to remain in a high school setting previously,'' Mr. Quinones said, in an apparent reference to harassment from other students. The alternative, he said, was to abandon the students and allow them to ''cruise the West Side of Manhattan in order to get money or some attention for themselves.'' ''We have a responsibility to all youngsters to the age of 21 to provide them with an education,'' Mr. Quinones said. ''We cannot say that we are responsible for reducing dropouts and then focus our attention on only one dimension of the school population.''

IF anyone asks whether New York's museums are taking it easy now that summer's near, the answer is ''Not so as you'd notice.''

Buried among 200 pages of the 1986 military programs bill that the House of Representatives will debate this month is a Congressional instruction that is rare in the annals of Air Force procurement. It calls for direct competition between two warplanes - the General Dynamics F-16 Falcon, of which the Air Force has already acquired more than 1,300, and Northrop's F-20 Tigershark, a plane that nobody has bought so far. The directive does not guarantee that Northrop will sell even a single F-20 to the Pentagon - and it may be, as some in Washington say, that the plane is being used simply to beat down the price of the F-16 - but the F-20's prospects have nonetheless suddenly blossomed. In addition to the military-reform movement in Congress, the plane has been given an assist from budget constraints on the Air Force, a drive by the Air National Guard to win new aircraft instead of traditional Air Force hand-me-downs and Northrop's own lobbying and marketing skills. And there may also be an export market. National security officials disclosed on Wednesday that Jordan appeared to be moving toward accepting Washington's preconditions - negotiations with Israel - for purchase of the F-20.

In the first hint of what may be a budding Democratic strategy on tax legislation, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee suggested today that his committee might favor a tax rate for wealthy Americans higher than the 35 percent rate proposed by President Reagan. ''There is talk of an additional bracket,'' the chairman, Representative Dan Rostenkowski, said at a breakfast meeting with reporters. The Illinois Democrat's remarks and testimony today from the Speaker of the House, Thomas P. O'Neill Jr., about the tax burden on the poor during the Reagan Presidency were indications that many Congressional Democrats would try to construct tax legislation that is more favorable to the poor and the middle class and less generous to the wealthy than the President's plan. From a political standpoint, that might let them lay claim to the theme of ''fairness'' Mr. Reagan has underscored in promoting his tax plan.