The DeKalb County school district’s reassignment last week of two dozen educators while they await inquiries into allegations of test tampering stands in marked contrast to the business-as-usual approach taken by the system’s neighbor to the west.

In Atlanta, nearly 100 educators suspected of cheating — or, at least, of causing testing irregularities — continue to lead schools and teach classrooms full of students each day. They may even help administer this year’s Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests in April.

Students and parents across DeKalb, however, are finding new faces at the head of the classroom and in the front office at midyear, an unusual time for personnel changes. The reassigned educators are moving far from CRCT administration, into areas such as IT and transportation.

The separate paths chosen by the two districts’ leaders show just how much the systems’ handling of cheating allegations diverged, nearly a year after a state investigation cast doubt on state test scores in hundreds of classrooms across Georgia.

The state’s mandate that DeKalb investigate highly suspicious numbers of erased and corrected answers at 26 schools appears to have met quiet acceptance and determination to find out what happened. The district’s investigation — though one of the longest to complete — elicited praise from a top state official.

“They left no stone unturned,” said Kathleen Mathers, executive director of the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement. Her office oversaw internal investigations conducted by 35 school districts with the highest concentrations of erasures statewide.

Mathers and other state leaders have less complimentary things to say about Atlanta, where efforts to investigate potential cheating at 58 schools met delays, criticism and, ultimately, rejection by former Gov. Sonny Perdue.

Little more than two weeks after a purportedly independent commission reported findings that essentially cleared all but 12 Atlanta schools of widespread cheating last August, a skeptical Perdue appointed special investigators to dig deeper. The investigators have elicited numerous confessions from educators who participated in, or witnessed, tampering.

Mathers said the differences between the two districts’ diligence were clear.

In DeKalb, investigators used data to examine students’ test-taking history to determine whether 2009 scores were out of line with prior performance. In Atlanta, a contractor used data to limit the scope of the investigation and focus on the dozen schools — a small fraction of those flagged by the state.

Investigators in DeKalb conducted more than 300 interviews, Mathers said, speaking with everyone who had something to do with the tests that came into question. While Atlanta did 292 interviews, “there were a number of places we couldn’t tell if they had spoken with anyone,” Mathers said. “We had no clear understanding of what questions were asked and what was learned.”

The DeKalb investigation traced the “chain of custody” for the tests and examined security records of key-card access to catch employees who may have entered buildings inappropriately. The Atlanta investigation, conducted by two firms overseen by a blue ribbon commission of civic and business leaders, provided no such detail.

DeKalb’s investigation was not only thorough, but also consistent across all schools facing allegations, Mathers said. “Their work spoke for itself,” she said. The district’s decision to reassign educators “says clearly they’re focused squarely on the kids” and are erring on the side of caution with personnel implicated in the scandal, she said.

DeKalb school officials said a concern for students’ well-being led the district to act. Interim superintendent Ramona Tyson said she couldn’t ignore the cheating allegations.

“My focus is on DeKalb children,” she said. “That’s what I’ve been sworn to do since taking office Feb. 25.”

DeKalb formed three four-person teams of staff members from its internal affairs and curriculum divisions to conduct the investigation. It did not hire contractors. District leaders took the personnel action after the state signed off on its report about a week ago.

In the end, DeKalb officials reassigned five principals, five assistant principals and 14 teachers at nine schools. Officials filed complaints against them with the state educator licensing agency, the Professional Standards Commission.

The district has also referred an additional five former DeKalb educators to the agency, which will conduct its own investigation based on the district’s findings.

The agency has met with DeKalb system attorney Ron Ramsey, said Gary Walker, deputy executive secretary for the standards commission. Ramsey has a history “of completing excellent and extensive investigations” that provide the agency the detail it needs to proceed, Walker said.

His agency, however, had a different reaction to Atlanta’s referral of 108 educators. For those, officials failed to provide enough information on what rules they were accusing educators of breaking, Walker said.

The state’s special investigators have since asked his agency to hold off on those cases until they complete their work.

Dozens of classes were flagged as suspicious in some Atlanta schools. In more than 60 teachers’ classrooms district-wide, erasing was so extensive the odds of it occurring by chance, without deliberate tampering, were nearly zero. Whether those teachers cheated, however, or whether the changes were made after the tests left their control, remains unclear.

Atlanta did reassign a dozen of the 108 educators it referred to the agency — all principals who led the schools where the blue ribbon commission found the most evidence that cheating had taken place. Two have since retired. The others remain on special assignment.

Atlanta spokesman Keith Bromery said Friday the district is still drawing up assignments for the CRCT, so it isn’t clear yet what the educators in question — or anyone else — will be doing. But he added that the district has tightened up its test-administration protocols to reduce the chances that cheating would take place. Teachers, for instance, no longer give their own students the test.

Including the Atlanta 108, a total of more than 200 school employees statewide have been turned in to the state for possible disciplinary action as a result of the scandal, Walker said. Sanctions by the Professional Standards Commission can range from a reprimand to loss of a teaching license.

Elsewhere in the metro area, neither Cobb, which investigated two schools, nor Clayton, which looked at 11 schools, referred any employees to the agency. Fulton had referred 16 as of November.

State investigations into test tampering began after The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published an article in 2008 questioning stupendous gains on summer CRCT retests at some schools. Later stories in the newspaper revealed other schools posted improbable scores on the 2009 CRCT.

Mathers said her office is considering the question of what to do about employees implicated in the scandal who could be involved in administering CRCTs this spring. Her office expects to brief the state board on the issue.

“We will likely be making recommendations on that in the next few weeks,” she said.

Staff writers Kristina Torres, Alan Judd and Megan Matteucci contributed to this article.