ATLANTA (AP) -- Atlanta students are performing better than ever before on national math and reading tests -- and they're not cheating to get there.
Officials with the U.S. Department of Education said Wednesday that the city's fourth- and eighth-graders have made substantial gains on the National Assessment of Educational Progress -- called the "Nation's Report Card" -- since 2002. A federal probe found that Atlanta schools did not cheat on the national test, which is administered by independent officials rather than the district.
In July, a Georgia investigation found widespread cheating in nearly half the district's 100 schools on state standardized tests dating back to 2001. The national test doesn't come with the same pressure as the state tests, which are used to determine whether a school meets federal benchmarks.
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