Mayor Bloomberg reminds New Yorkers whenever he gets a chance that he wants to be judged on his education record, and yesterday, as the state announced math test gains, was no exception.

“The good news is, and I don’t want to read too much into any one test or any one series of tests, both in the fourth and eighth grades the results are very encouraging,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “They continue a trend that has taken place over the last three or so years. They show the same trend that the city tests show, all of which means it’s probably not just a statistical aberration of one test being a little bit easier one year than another.”

Around the same time, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein said the scores would be one of the educational achievements New Yorkers take into account at Election Day. He said they showed under the Bloomberg administration the city is “turning the corner and on the right road.”

With the election only a year away, Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Klein have been drawing attention to schools – with the heralding of achievement gains, the announcement of new policies, and the holding of celebratory press conferences – and encouraging city voters to judge the administration on its education record. Yesterday, politicians, advocates, and experts were divided on whether the new set of test scores should lead voters to back Mr. Bloomberg in 2005.

The chairwoman of the City Council’s education committee, Eva Moskowitz, who doesn’t hold her punches, said Mr. Bloomberg hasn’t erased problems from the city’s public-school system.

But Ms. Moskowitz – a Democrat of Manhattan and a political ally of a likely mayoral contender, Gifford Miller, the council speaker – said Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Klein “deserve a lot of credit for their focus, their demand for rigor, and their boldness in reorganizing amidst a lot of complaints and criticisms.”

She predicted the test scores would “assist” the mayor in his re-election campaign.

“It’s not as if the job’s done and we can go home,” Ms. Moskowitz said. “I do think, though, that it’s important to celebrate when there are significant gains, and I would say this is a moment when those people who have been flogging away in the trenches, including teachers, but also Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein and Rick Mills … should take a bow so we can applaud them.” Mr. Mills is the state commissioner of education.

A professor of public policy at Baruch College, David Birdsell, also said the scores should boost Mr. Bloomberg’s popularity among voters. He said while city students’ scores on specific tests are unlikely to affect the mayor, “trend lines” are important, and so far the trend line is pointing in the right direction.

“The key here is not 1% or 2% or 5%. The key is the trend,” Mr. Birdsell said. “What the mayor will be able to point to is a steady improvement in performance. It at least appears to support his strategy toward the schools.”

The Baruch professor said the fact that New York City scores are improving faster than other big cities in the state would give extra credence to the mayor’s approach.

While politics experts said the results should bode well for the mayor, education experts said there is not enough evidence to form an opinion of Mr. Bloomberg’s record with the schools.

The dean of the school of education at City College of New York, Alfred Posamentier, acknowledged the gains but said Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Klein don’t deserve the credit for them.

“Either the difficulty level of the test has not been consistent, or Mills deserves a lot of credit because he put math back on the front burner,” Mr. Posamentier said, adding that gains were similar across the state.

The executive director of Advocates for Children, Jill Chaifetz, also said New Yorkers shouldn’t form an opinion of Mr. Bloomberg based on these scores.

“The Bloomberg administration hasn’t been in long enough to have had a huge effect on this,” she said. “You’d need a couple more years before you could attribute success or failure one way or the other to the Bloomberg administration.”