A year after they started their work, investigators for the state Department of Education still are sorting through who to sanction for school cheating.

The county prosecutor still is preparing a case against one former Columbus City Schools administrator and considering cases against a couple more. And the state auditor, whose 18-month investigation confirmed that many Columbus administrators had falsified student attendance and grade records, is back in the district to see what has changed.

Soon, three years will have passed since the cheating became publicly known. The Dispatch first reported on cheating in Columbus in June 2012.

Counting Kids Out: Complete coverage of the Columbus schools data scandal

Meanwhile, in Atlanta, where a widespread school-cheating scandal also led to years of investigations and prosecutions, 11 educators were convicted of federal racketeering charges this week. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution uncovered the cheating in 2009, the state completed an investigation in 2011 and the racketeering charges were brought in 2013.

The Atlanta case is similar to Columbus’ because it involved tampering with records to try to make schools appear better than they were. It’s different because the U.S. district attorney there brought racketeering charges and took the case to trial. That didn’t happen here. Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien has led the criminal cases and could not use the federal racketeering law. Still, three educators, including the superintendent, have been convicted of crimes. Two were felonies.

It was a long and laborious slog in Atlanta, just as it has been here.

The Ohio Department of Education’s Office of Professional Conduct, which investigates educator wrongdoing, has been investigating the accused for a year but as yet hasn’t brought action. It added lawyers to help with the caseload.

The department began with a list of more than 65 educators from Columbus whose licenses could be at risk, and then there are educators from the seven other school districts across Ohio that “scrubbed” students from their rolls. They withdrew kids who’d never left and then re-enrolled them. That ensured their test scores, which often were poor, wouldn’t count on the school’s state report card.

The professional-conduct office has conducted 140 interviews so far and has reviewed more than 211,000 documents. More than half of the interviews conducted were in Columbus. Just as the auditor’s investigation took 18 months, the license-sanction review is taking some time.

“We want to be fair and make sure we do thorough investigations before we take action,” said John Charlton, spokesman for the education department. “We have to be fair to the educators that are being accused to make sure they get due process.”

The Columbus school district’s in-house lawyer, Larry Braverman, said the district has been responding to the state’s subpoenas and requests for records. The Dispatch has reviewed those subpoenas, which indicate that the education department took special interest in grade changes and course-credit issues, particularly at Whetstone High School, in recent months.

O’Brien has said he intends to take his case against Michael Dodds to a grand jury. Dodds was a top-level administrator who, computer logs show, falsified thousands of enrollment records, some in schools in which he had no oversight duties. He has refused to take a plea deal. http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/04/03/painstaking-probes-into-datascandal-still-rolling.html