Both this week and last, Mayor Bloomberg spoke of his success in reducing violence and disruptive behavior in the schools. Yesterday, however, the city’s public advocate said the problems the mayor pledged to tackle last year are far from resolved.

The public advocate, Betsy Gotbaum, released an anecdotal report about the suspension policy that was put in place last year by Mr. Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein. She concluded that hundreds of troublemakers who should have been removed from school under the city’s new policy were still walking the halls.

“I think the mayor is spinning it in a way he has to spin,” Ms. Gotbaum said. “Let’s look a little bit beneath that. Things that are supposed to stop more bad things from happening are not happening.”

At a City Hall news conference last January, Mr. Bloomberg said: “For too long, we’ve slowly found ourselves sinking further and further into a pit where anything is tolerated, where the teachers don’t have a safe environment, where the teachers can’t do their job and the down students can’t learn.” He pledged to bring down crime in schools the same way it had been brought down in New York City under Mayor Giuliani.

A few weeks later, Mr. Klein, speaking at a City Council hearing, pledged there would be “real consequences for even minor violations.” He said students who are suspended two times within a 24-month period would be sent to an alternative site while awaiting a hearing and would be transferred to a new school. Students who brought illegal weapons to school or caused serious injuries would be kicked out of school immediately and placed in a “second opportunity” school for up to a year.

Despite those promises and the claims of progress, Ms. Gotbaum’s study found, hundreds of troublemakers remain at the schools where they first caused trouble.

At Franklin K. Lane High School in Brooklyn, for example, 70 students have been suspended this school year alone. Between 30 and 40 students with multiple suspensions are back at school. The administrator who talked to Ms. Gotbaum’s office said two students with multiple superintendent suspensions for assault and armed burglary are coming back to school in March. Franklin K. Lane is one of five schools that Mr. Bloomberg removed from the list of most dangerous schools last week.

At Adlai Stevenson High School in the Bronx, about 300 students have been suspended in the past year, Ms. Gotbaum found. A third of those students have been suspended twice within the past two years, and all but one are back at the school.

At William Howard Taft High School, also in the Bronx, there have been 300 suspensions this year, according to the report. About 100 were for second offenses. All of those students are still at school, the public advocate reported.

At Benjamin N. Cardozo High School in Queens, 55 students have been suspended, Ms. Gotbaum found, of whom 20 had been suspended before. Again, all of them are back at school.

Ms. Gotbaum said it makes sense for disruptive students to be removed to suspension centers while they’re awaiting hearings, and for chronically disruptive students to be sent to centers, where they can learn in more supportive environments and not disrupt their old schools. She said neither of those goals is being met, though, because of a lack of clear explanation of the new policy to school leaders and a lack of capacity.

“Let’s look at what is really happening with the reforms – if their suspension policy is sending the very kids back to school that it was supposed to remove,” Ms. Gotbaum said. “Something’s got to be done. We’ve got to look at why it’s not working.”

The press secretary to the chancellor, Jerry Russo, disputed Ms. Gotbaum’s findings.

“We don’t know what her sources are,” he said, “but we do know that she doesn’t understand the policy.”

According to the department, the suspension policy is in place only at so-called “impact schools,” and seven of the 12 schools Ms. Gotbaum investigated are not on that list of the city’s most dangerous schools.

Further, Mr. Russo said the policy is three strikes and you’re out, not two strikes and you’re out. He did not explain why the department’s Web site carried Mr. Klein council testimony of last year specifying transfers after two suspensions.

In addition, the department said the report’s numbers are not accurate.

At Lane, where Ms. Gotbaum said there were 70 infractions, the city said that there were 90 and that only one three-time offender is back.

Ms. Gotbaum, a Democrat who is expected to seek re-election this fall, said her report, which was the result of conversations at 12 high schools, was not politically motivated.

“I’m not running against the mayor,” she said. “This is not a political thing. I’m doing it because I see it as a problem.”

The president of the principals union, Jill Levy, reacted vehemently to Ms. Gotbaum’s report.

“There is A Tale of Two Cities in our education system today,” she said in a statement. “The one the DOE spins out in press releases and glitzy photo-ops, and the real world where CSA members work every day in the trenches.” CSA is an acronym for Council of School Supervisors and Administrators.

Ms. Levy said the “trenches” are not very pleasant under the leadership of Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Klein.

“The DOE refuses to implement programs to treat the systemic problems that lead to unruly students. Instead, they only want to deal with students after they have become troublemakers, and even that plan was never successfully put in place.”

The mayor, besides speaking in his State of the City address of having made the public schools safer, announced Jan. 3 that the number of police officers assigned at the impact schools, which now number 16, would be increased to 200 from 150.