Five Ohio school districts show evidence of scrubbing attendance data to improve their report card ratings, according to an interim audit report on the first 100 schools released Thursday by the state auditor’s office.

Those districts include Columbus, Marion, Cleveland Municipal, Toledo and Campbell City Schools in Mahoning County.

State auditors examined student attendance records in nine Miami Valley school districts as part of the statewide probe into possible data tampering. Administrators for Dayton, Springfield, Hamilton, Trotwood-Madison, Northridge and Jefferson Twp. school districts had confirmed earlier to the Dayton Daily News that state auditors had visited their schools as part of the investigation.The state also audited Bradford, Mississinawa Valley and Ansonia.

The auditor’s office began the investigation with a sampling of 100 schools throughout the state that were flagged by ODE data based on a high number of withdrawals and other factors.

State auditors may expand the investigation beyond those schools to determine which ones may have improperly altered student attendance data to make their state report cards look better.

A yearlong Ohio Department of Education investigation found in July the Lockland Local Schools near Cincinnati falsely reported withdrawing 36 students during the school year in an effort to boost its annual report card rating.

The investigation was broadened after Columbus and Toledo city school districts also were publicly identified for questionable practices, with the focus on test scores that didn’t count toward the districts’ state report cards because some students were struck from the rolls and re-enrolled later.