High school graduation rates released yesterday by the state Department of Education paint an even grimmer picture than those announced last week by the Bloomberg administration.

While 64% of students who started ninth grade in 2001 across the state graduated in four years, that number reached just 44% in New York City. Just 37% of New York City boys graduated in four years, while half of all girls did.

The data reignite an issue that emerged during the mayoral election last year, when Democratic candidate Fernando Ferrer seized on the topic and insisted that Mr. Bloomberg was inflating the graduation numbers.

Last week, Mr. Bloomberg released his preliminary management report indicating that 53% of students graduated in four years, a rate almost 10 percentage points higher than the state’s statistic.

The state figures are lower because they do not include students who passed the high school equivalency test known as the GED or who graduated in August as opposed to June. The state also includes a group of severely disabled students that the city excludes from its calculation, which brings down the state’s calculation of the city’s graduation rate, according to city and state officials.

In a news conference yesterday in Albany, the state education commissioner, Richard Mills, called the new statewide data “disturbing” and “unacceptable.”

The graduation rates measuring students who finish in five years or less are better, with 71% of students statewide obtaining a degree compared to 52.7% in the city.

Still, the city Department of Education’s senior instructional manager for assessment and accountability, Lori Mei, said improvements needed to be made.

“Whenever you say that fewer than half of the students graduate, we would say yes, that’s disturbing,” Ms. Mei said. The Bloomberg administration has focused the bulk of its reforms on elementary and middle school in order to prepare students for high school, she said.

“Reforms so far have improved results in elementary and middle grades, promising higher achievement in high school in the future,” Mr. Mills said. “But it is critical that we take action to change high school now.”

In the city, only 17% of students with disabilities graduated in four years compared to 45% in the rest of the state. For English language learners in the city, about 26% graduated in four years.

During the mayoral campaign, Mr. Ferrer claimed the city only graduated 38% of its school children on time. He later adjusted that figure to 44%, a number closer to the mayor’s own figure, explaining that the earlier figure had come from a Harvard University study based on figures from 2001, before Mr. Bloomberg took office.

The mayor shot back with Department of Education figures showing the 2004 rate at 54.3%, up from 50.8% in 2002 when Mr. Bloomberg took office. Last year, it dropped slightly to 53.2%

Since gaining control of the city’s school system with 1.1 million students and about 1,300 students, Mr. Bloomberg has asked to be judged on his education reforms.

“The state Education Department, no political supporter of mine, has come out with some pretty tough numbers,” Mr. Ferrer told The New York Sun yesterday. “We’ve got to pay a lot more attention to middle school and high school interventions. We’re losing kids in droves and that’s not right,” he said.

Asked about the numbers dispute during the election, Mr. Ferrer said, “That’s just spin, that’s what people do in campaigns.”

Broken down by race, the graduation rates highlight a stark gap between black and Latino students and white students.

About 80% of white students statewide graduated in four years, roughly twice the percentage of black and Latino students.

At the same time, the state’s fourth grade tests show progress for black and Latino students with 54% scoring at grade level or above last year, almost double the number in 1999.

“Unfortunately it’s a longstanding and national problem that graduation rates are too low, lower than most people realize and way too low for minority students,” a Manhattan Institute scholar and professor at the University of Arkansas, Jay Greene, said.

He said that there were “some hints” that New York City may be turning the corner and that his independent estimates showed the city’s numbers were creeping up.

As for the reforms by the schools chancellor Joel Klein and Mayor Bloomberg, Mr. Greene said, “For the most part their effect on graduation rates cannot not be known for a decade, when they are long gone.”