Comptroller William Thompson Jr. is taking on an issue the Bloomberg administration touts as one of its accomplishments, the city’s schools, saying that vocational programs deserve a boost from their second-class status.

Vocational high schools are more successful overall than other high schools in retaining students and sending them on to graduation, Mr. Thompson said, referring to a report his office issued yesterday. When asked if he believes the Bloomberg administration is failing vocational schools, Mr. Thompson said that over the last few years “there’s been a decline in support.”

He later added that time is needed to see if the city’s reading and math scores are showing sustained growth. “I think right now it’s kind of undecided as to whether there’s been major improvement,” he said.

In September, the city was given a prestigious national award, the Broad Prize for Urban Education, which recognized New York as the nation’s most improved urban school district. The city’s reading and math scores are on the rise and the achievement gap is waning.

Calls placed late yesterday to the Department of Education were not returned.

Mr. Thompson issued his office’s report during a speech on the competitive future of New York yesterday, in which he struck a mayoral tone, calling for lower taxes on small businesses, an easing of Sarbanes-Oxley provisions, and a solution to the travel delays plaguing the city’s airports.

Mr. Thompson, who is expected to run for mayor in 2009, said there are signs that the city’s position as the world’s financial center is becoming less secure. The city’s record budget surpluses have been fueled by Wall Street profits, he said at an Association for a Better New York breakfast. He added that whenever a job is created on Wall Street, another 1.3 jobs are created elsewhere in the city.

“We must do everything we can to maintain the health of this critical industry and the people who work there,” he said.

Mr. Thompson said after his speech that he supports much of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which placed new financial reporting requirements on businesses, but that he’d like some of the standards loosened for small businesses.

“We’d like to create some more support for small companies these days,” he said. “They are the ones who are complaining about the inordinate costs of reporting right now.”

The City Council speaker, Christine Quinn, who also is expected to run for mayor, spoke about government accountability during a speech before the association earlier this month.