Results released recently show all Bulloch County elementary schools performed well on the 2011 Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests Georgia uses to measure progress in state schools.
Reading and math scores improved in the key third, fifth and eighth grade tests, and superintendent Lewis Holloway said the results are "100-percent reflective of the good efforts by our students, with no outside help."
Further, Holloway said "I am more than confident, I am certain, cheating did not occur in our testing."
Holloway was referring to the cheating on CRCT tests that state officials say was widespread in the Atlanta Public Schools System. A state report names 178 Atlanta teachers and principals, of which 82 confessed to cheating. Tens of thousands of children at  44 schools, most in the city's poorest neighborhoods, were allowed to advance to higher grades, even though they didn't know basic concepts.
"Clearly a climate of cheating was not only tolerated but it seems encouraged in the Atlanta system," Holloway said. "It's hard to fathom the extent of what happened there."
The testing problems first came to light in 2009 after The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that the improvements seen in some scores were statistically improbable. The state released audits of test results after the newspaper published its analysis.
"(The audit) found erasure marks on many (Atlanta system) tests on more than 50 perecnt of the answers," Holloway said. "That's a huge red flag that something was up."
The state then looked more closely at school results around Georgia where 5 percent or more erasure marks were found. No Bulloch school was part of the extended investigation since none met the 5-percent criteria.
"I believe we had one school with 4 percent," Holloway said.