The Ohio Department of Education on Wednesday posted the results in a spreadsheet for now – instead of the charts, graphs and other visual elements that districts and families have come to expect.

Click here to look up your district and school building.

Results are still considered preliminary as Ohio Auditor Dave Yost investigates enrollment and attendance irregularities around the state.

The Ohio Board of Education voted to release the eagerly-awaited information, in part because Election Day is approaching and many districts are pursuing levy and bond issues.

The reports are normally published in August. Schools and districts have had access to preliminary student achievement data on standardized assessments throughout the summer.

Yost today released the preliminary audit into attendance record-keeping practices at 75 Ohio districts. The investigation follows revelations that several Ohio districts may have withdrawn poorly-performing students, then re-enrolled them.

Doing so keeps their standardized test scores from factoring into district report card ratings, although Yost says today’s report did not deal with why the changes were made.

“In Columbus’ public school district, we looked at ten middle schools. In each of them, we found pervasive evidence of students who had been rolled up to the state, who had a break in enrollment, who was not supported by the documentation,” Yost said.

“Without the documentation, all we have is anyone’s word. This is more than nitpicking about pieces of paper. Without the records, there is no evidence that the actions were properly taken by the government.”

Yost says school districts in Cleveland, Toledo, Marion, and Campbell also showed evidence of scrubbing.

Yost defined scrubbing as the practice of removing students from enrollment without unlawful reason, although he says scrubbing by itself does not guarantee wrong-doing.

The full investigation is expected to extend into next year.

But even that incomplete data won’t be public until the end of the month.

Ohio schools are under investigation by the state auditor, who wants to know which ones falsified attendance records. That kind of data manipulation could boost schools’ report cards, which is why the State Board of Education has held off on releasing what could be incorrect data in this year’s scores. Until now, that is.

“I believe from a full transparency piece that if the information is available and people want access to it, why don’t we give them access to the preliminary data,” says acting Superintendent of Public Instruction Michael Sawyers.

Sawyers argues that since many media outlets have already requested and will be getting access to the preliminary report card data, the board might as well release it to the general public.

“We can add a disclaimer or a qualifier that says this is all subject to further review and try to do something short and simple to explain what’s going on with the auditor of state’s office, but I think we have a duty and a responsibility to share what’s available.”

The preliminary data will be released in a spreadsheet around September 30th. It will not include attendance rates, performance index scores, or the overall score of a school or district.

This week Auditor Dave Yost urged the board to release the data, even if some of it may have to be adjusted later on.

“But I would suggest to you that the data was probably bad last year in the same way and there’s conceivably a benefit at least to comparing year-to-year what was going on.”

Yost says he may not wrap up his investigation until the New Year, which means the final report card data may not come out until later in 2013.

Speaking to the Ohio Board of Education this morning, Yost said it is his “gut feeling” that districts did nothing wrong. He says his office is working with statistics experts from Ohio State University to develop a model to help find any Ohio schools more likely to have been involved in attendance data manipulation .

Yost hopes to have the model working by October so he can determine which schools need to be reviewed. Yost says his office will give priority to districts with levies on the fall ballot so investigations can be finished before the election and not impact voters.

Yost’s office is looking into why Columbus City Schools and other districts withdrew students, and whether the withdrawals were legitimate or part of an effort to boost attendance data that helps determine state report card ratings.

Columbus superintendent Gene Harris has denied any intentional wrongdoing.

Last winter, Democratic state lawmaker Matt Lundy questioned how Republican Lt. Governor Mary Taylor and Republican House Speaker Bill Batchelder were using state planes. Lundy claimed they were using the planes for convenience purposes, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill.

Republican Ohio Auditor David Yost has done an audit on the plane usage. Office spokeswoman Carrie Bartunek says Yost found Ohio does not have clear rules for how and when planes can be used.

We did not find any formal policies or procedures that actually cite when it’s appropriate or not appropriate to use a plane. Therefore, without those guidelines, it was difficult to say that any flight was inappropriate because there were no guidelines to match it to.

As part of his report, Yost recommends that the state sells one of the aircraft. Representative Lundy says he now will try to get the Ohio legislature to deal with the issue.

As legislators, we need to look at putting in place stronger guidelines, rules, regulations, laws regarding the use of state property including planes.

“And this includes colleges and universities. I think we need to tighten our belts and have greater accountability as to what is public purpose, public use,” Lundy says.

Yost’s report recommends specific steps that should be taken when coming up with rules and regulations for the plane. ….suggestions that Lundy says could be put into the proposed legislation.

State Auditor Dave Yost says the 2009 audit of the four Richard Allen Academy schools show almost a million taxpayer dollars were misspent.

“There’s a whole range of recovery, from $1000 to buy booze, from several hundreds of thousands of dollars misspent, to overpaying the management company to a $172,000 transfer that we have no idea where it went. We had credit card purchases that were improperly reimbursed. There’s just a whole group of things that went wrong here.”

Yost says money for some questionable items, like the booze for a Monte Carlo party, has been paid back to the schools.

When asked why the board that oversees these schools didn’t catch the problems, Yost explains there are problems with the board itself.

“For example, one of the board members was hired on a couple of occasions to paint the schools. The daughter of the president of the management company was appointed principal then promoted to assistant superintendent then became superintendent so there are a number of tangled relationships here where there should be independence.

Yost says he’s referred the matter to the Ohio Ethics Commission, as well as the Ohio Department of Education. He says that could result in possible criminal charges.

Yost says any findings should not be taken as an indictment against charter schools in general.

“Most charter schools operate ethically and efficiently. It’s a small minority that have problems like this. But among those that do have problems, this is one of the worst we’ve seen. This school is doing a good job educationally. The problems are on the financial side.”

An attorney for Richard Allen Academy Schools, Edmund Brown, says their charter schools are relatively new and the people who run them had just moved into the schools from the private sector.

“As with any new entity, there are going to be growing pains,” Browns says. “There were mistakes made on behalf of the schools going through the processes. And as you know, this was a fiscal 2009 audit. And it’s now February 2012. Most, if not all, of the issues addressed in the 2009 audit have been addressed going forward so they are non issues now.”

Brown says the documentation school administrators provided to explain many of the issues that were identified in the Auditor’s report was largely rejected. And Brown says the schools have been making changes that were suggested in the audit.

Maybe so, but Auditor David Yost says that doesn’t free the school from culpability.

“This was action that was taken after the auditors came in. It’s like a cat trying to cover up on a linoleum floor.”