A weekend report in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on test cheating has "found high concentrations of suspect math or reading scores in school systems from coast to coast."

The AJC analyzed year-by-year performance on reading and math tests for 69,000 public schools across the country. The paper reported that "196 of the nation’s 3,125 largest school districts had enough suspect tests that the odds of the results occurring by chance alone were worse than one in 1,000."

The AJC posted a searchable database for the thousands of school districts it reviewed.

Wake County school board member Chris Malone focused on the AdvancED accreditation investigation during his speech at last Thursday's Northern Wake Republican Club meeting.

Malone related his "interrogation" with the AdvancED team saying that "one of the first things that happened to me was one of the fellas pointed his finger at me and said, 'I just want you to know that I don't like your policies.'"

"I thought, well okay," Malone said. "I said to him well obviously you're not a fan and we sat down and continued the interview, interrogation, whatever you want to call it."

An investigation by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reveals a large gap at many universities between the SAT scores of athletes and scores for the student body at large.

In many cases, the SAT scores of football and men's basketball players at schools - mostly public - that compete on the highest and most visible level are hundreds of points lower than average scores of the total student body at those same schools.

The largest gap, according to the report, is at the University of Florida, where the average SAT score for football players is 346 points lower than the average score for that institution's student body.

Florida's football team will play for the national championship in early January.

The investigation focuses on public universities since their data on SAT scores is public information. It also includes information from Syracuse because that institution makes the data public. According to the newspaper, some schools - Penn State, Pittsburgh - declined to release the information. Kansas State simply deleted the details. 

Wondering how your school comes out? The Atlanta paper has an easy-to-search database here.  

This reporting follows a November expose by USA Today that tracked college athletes and the majors they chose. I blogged about that issue here.