The Bloomberg administration’s sweeping education reforms have pushed city schools in the right direction, according to a report released yesterday by researchers at the New York University Steinhardt School of Education.

More education dollars are going directly to the classroom, teacher certification is nearing 100%, teachers are returning, and fewer students in elementary and middle schools are stuck in overcrowded classrooms, the report found.

The dean of the Steinhardt School, Mary Brabeck, said the city’s 1,400 schools could not be “turned around on a dime,” but she pointed to marked improvement and indicated the administration was headed down the correct path.

The Partnership for New York City, a nonprofit civic group representing the city’s large corporations, commissioned the study to evaluate Bloomberg’s Children First education reforms. The group was a vocal supporter of the mayor’s taking control of city schools.

“It’s an old axiom in business that you cannot manage what you cannot measure,” the chairman and CEO of Time Warner and a member of the partnership, Richard Parsons, said yesterday at a news briefing on the findings.

The progress report found the proportion of certified teachers last year soared to 98.8%, up from 83.3% in 2002. The number of failing schools functioning at such a poor level that they risked losing state registration status dropped to 35 last year from 97 in 2000.

The proportion of children enrolled in overcrowded elementary and middle schools declined to 26%, from 46% in 2002. At the same time, however, overcrowding of high school hovered around 70%.

The Department of Education provided the data for the study, which researchers acknowledged was not ideal. The study, for example, said millions of dollars were pumped into classrooms by cutting administrative spending to $617 million last year from $939 million in 2001. In February, however, the city comptroller, William Thompson Jr., issued a report stating his office was unable to verify the department’s claims of administrative cost-cutting.

A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Jay Greene, who heads the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, said he wasn’t concerned about the study’s reliance on city-generated information but believed the data should be available to everyone.

“It would strengthen everybody’s confidence if others could interpret it,” Mr. Greene said. Aside from wanting more transparency, he said he was encouraged by the study.

“The most important improvement is that student achievement, as measured by test scores, is rising, and ultimately that leads to lots of other good things. Those improvements are more impressive in the younger grades, but at the same time that’s where Chancellor Klein has focused his most important reform efforts,” Mr. Greene said, speaking of Mr. Bloomberg’s schools chancellor, Joel Klein.

Despite improvements, researchers cautioned that it is too early to come to conclusive determinations about the success of particular reforms. They also said graduation and attendance rates had remained flat and high schools remained terribly overcrowded.