Outstanding investigation:

Suspicious test scores in roughly 200 school districts resemble those that entangled Atlanta in the biggest cheating scandal in American history, an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows.

The newspaper analyzed test results for 69,000 public schools and found high concentrations of suspect math or reading scores in school systems from coast to coast. The findings represent an unprecedented examination of the integrity of school testing.

The analysis doesn’t prove cheating. But it reveals that test scores in hundreds of cities followed a pattern that, in Atlanta, indicated cheating in multiple schools.

In 2008 and 2009, the AJC uncovered statistically improbable jumps in test scores in the Atlanta Public Schools. Those reports triggered a state investigation that found at least 180 principals, teachers and staff involved in test-tampering.

Today’s report, headlined Cheating our Children, finds 196 of the nation’s 3,125 largest school districts had enough suspect test results that the odds of the results occurring naturally were less than one in 1,000. In For 33 districts, the odds are worse than one in a million.

Improving standardized test scores was a centerpiece of No Child Left Behind. While the tests are required, screening or investigating anomalies is not.

Both critics and supporters of testing said the newspaper’s findings are further evidence that in the frenzy to raise scores, the nation failed to pay enough attention to what was driving the gains.

Davis Guggenheim, take note:

Improbable scores were twice as likely to appear in charter schools as regular schools. Charters, which receive public money, can face intense pressure as supposed laboratories of innovation that, in theory, live or die by their academic performance.

NBC follows up: