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An analysis of nearly 15,000 districts’ test scores turned up suspicious patterns that suggested that some cheating might be taking place in New York City schools.

The analysis was conducted by a team of reporters and researchers at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the newspaper that covered last year’s revelations about a far-ranging cheating scandal in Atlanta’s schools. The team looked at changes in students’ test scores from year to year, reasoning that large increases or decreases in groups of students’ test scores would be unlikely without an unusual intervention such as cheating.

The analysis does not identify instances of cheating, only places and times when cheating is considered more likely to have occurred.

Most of New York’s 32 school districts fell well within the normal range, with around 5 percent of classes showing unusually large score climbs or falls. But in a few places, the analysis detected swings in more than 10 percent of classes, a level that experts told the AJC team was highly improbable under normal circumstances.

In Brooklyn’s District 16, for example, 7.95 to 12.82 percent of classes between 2009 and 2011 showed suspicious test score swings. Between 2008 and 2011, the percentage of classes flagged in Manhattan’s District 2, which includes many middle-class students, ranged from 7.41 to 12.5 — significantly higher than in neighboring districts. (more…)