Mayor Bloomberg told New Yorkers four years ago that he wanted to be held accountable for his education record. Now, with the 2005 election nine months away, the mayor’s political, union, and ideological rivals are beginning to launch routine attacks on the way Mr. Bloomberg and his schools chancellor, Joel Klein, have governed the public school system and the reforms they have implemented, and everyday New Yorkers are preparing to judge the mayor and the chancellor.

The attacks are already beginning from unions and elements of the educational establishment and political opponents. The New York Times cannot be far behind. But Mr. Klein and the Bloomberg administration say they remain committed to the city’s major education initiatives, positive about their successes, and confident that after four more years, advances will only be more apparent.

“Fundamentally we’ve embarked on probably the most ambitious public school reform in the United States,” Mr. Klein said, before launching into a long accounting of the new policies and structural changes he and the mayor have introduced to the school system. “This is powerful stuff, it seems to me.”

In an interview at Tweed Courthouse yesterday afternoon, the chancellor and the deputy mayor in charge of education, Dennis Walcott, said not every policy they had implemented was without flaws. But they said the administration had made great strides in reorganizing a chaotic and corrupt system and implementing programs – from the “impact school” initiative and the small-schools plan to a standardized curriculum and a crackdown on social promotion – that were helping teachers teach and students learn.

Mr. Walcott said the facts of the Bloomberg schools revolution should speak for themselves. He said initial results from the social promotion policy show that the children who have been promoted are more prepared to take on the material of the next grade; the children who are attending small high schools are attending at higher rates; graduation rates are improving; class sizes are falling; there are fewer violent incidents in schools; more students are scoring well on exams, and fewer schools are considered failing.

While it’s true that the mayor and the chancellor have tackled all of the major reforms they promised in their first months on the job, New Yorkers have mixed opinions of the administration’s success.

The business community, which has donated more than $210 million to Department of Education initiatives, is perhaps the administration’s strongest booster.

“I think the biggest accomplishment is they basically have – both the chancellor and the mayor – have changed the conversation about the New York City public schools to one about how we can improve them and excitement about the progress rather than what had existed for decades before, which was a totally negative condemnation of the failure of our school system,” the president of the Partnership for New York City, Kathryn Wylde, said. “I think their commitment to the public schools, their commitment to change, has already created a kind of positive momentum even at a very early stage, even though the results aren’t in.”

Mr. Klein points to large, private donations from groups including the Broad Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as “external validation” that the reforms have merit.

“The good money’s betting on New York,” he said. “Those are people who think that Michael Bloomberg knows what he’s doing and is about the most serious school reformer in the United States.”

The other groups that stand firmly behind Mr. Klein advocate school choice.

The president of the New York Charter Schools Association, Bill Phillips, called Mr. Klein, who has promised he would help open 50 new charter schools, “a homerun for charters.”

“I thought the 50 schools was an ambitious start,” he said. “It’s very clear to me that the chancellor and his office have done everything they can do to deliver on that front…. If anything, the guy’s done more than he’s promised.”

The president of the Albany-based Foundation for Education Reform and Accountability, Tom Carroll, said he would encourage the administration to focus more on reforms like school vouchers, but he said, “On a statistical basis, the schools are doing better than when they showed up. You have a greater array of options than the day the mayor took office.”

Although some constituencies stand behind Mr. Bloomberg, many are loudly opposed.

The teachers union has been without a contract for two years, and negotiations with the city are stalled. This week, the union staged protests throughout the city, and yesterday it announced that the state Public Employment Relations Board has ordered non-binding fact-finding to try to help the city and the union reach a contract.

The union president, Randi Weingarten, said grassroots protests are “popping up all over the place” as teachers grow more frustrated with “micromanagement.”

“I just wish I could clone myself so I could be in every single place where there’s an action,” she said.

She said the Bloomberg administration is forcing excess paperwork upon teachers and making them waste time on decorating bulletin boards rather than teaching.

The principals union president, Jill Levy, condemned the small schools program, the chancellor’s special education policies, and what she called “this silly, stupid corporate model” that he has instituted.

Mr. Klein dismisses the unions’ complaints.

“You didn’t hear it three months ago,” he said. “You didn’t hear it until the negotiations broke down…. And I do think we are certainly managing our workforce, which is very different from micromanaging.”

He did acknowledge that some of the classroom rules and regulations might seem oppressive, but he said that’s not the intent.

“Sometimes, at times, I think a particular administrator, a particular superintendent can be too prescriptive,” he said. “When people say mini-lessons should be 10 minutes, I don’t think this should be a stopwatch exercise…I like nice bulletin boards, but I don’t think we’re going to bulletin board our way to success, and I don’t think we should try to.”

The deputy mayor said the mayor would not compromise his values to achieve a contract during an election year.

Not all critics are union members or political opponents of the mayor.

People including the Manhattan Institute scholar, Sol Stern, and the educational historian, Diane Ravitch, who used to support the mayor’s education agenda, are now loud critics.

“I think the Chancellor is emphasizing the wrong pedagogy and classroom practices, and to make it worse, he is enforcing them with dictatorial practices and in a climate of fear that is driving very good veteran teachers out of the system,” Mr. Stern said. “That’s the single most destructive thing the new regime has done.”

Mr. Klein has a response to his academic critics as well.

“No disrespect to pundits, but none of them ever taught a kid to read,” he said, adding, “None of them have ever been able to answer the ‘Carmen Farina’ challenge, which is in a district that was largely minority, largely high poverty, it was implemented consistently for four years under her leadership, and the results clearly outpaced the city dramatically.” He was referring to the deputy chancellor for teaching and learning, a veteran educator.

Mr. Klein also has an answer for curious voters who wonder what he would do given four more years at Tweed: refer to the mayor’s blueprint for spending the new money expected as a result of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity litigation. That would mean smaller class sizes, longer school years, and more focus on pre-kindergarten. He said he’s also interested in developing a stronger relationship with city agencies including the Department of Health and the New York City Housing Authority, as well as ramping up science, art, and physical education programs.