Here's why rankings are often rank

Coeur d’Alene Charter Academy has fallen off the map of highly ranked high schools. That’s a big deal.

Coeur d’Alene High School and its younger sibling, Lake City, are on the map. They just aren’t rated very highly. That’s no big deal.

Those statements can both be true, as the debate over rankings in general, and U.S. News & World Report’s rankings in particular, simmers locally. Here’s how.

Coeur d’Alene Charter Academy remains one of the best college prep public high schools not just in Idaho, but in the nation. National test scores document its competitive edge, and we contend that any parent who spends even an hour in a Charter classroom will sense a difference between it and most other public school classrooms.

For those wanting more quantifiable proof, follow the money.

In 2012, Charter graduated 36 seniors — including four appointments to West Point. Combined, those 36 students received $3.2 million in scholarship offers.

In 2013, 52 graduates were offered $5.7 million in scholarships.

In 2014, 67 graduates received $4.1 million in scholarship offers.

And in 2015, 43 Charter graduates attracted another $4.1 million in scholarship offers.

Exactly where the blame lies for the annual ratings to have ignored CDA Charter Academy is hard to guess. Some of it might belong to the publication itself. However, because the Idaho Department of Education did not respond to this newspaper’s detailed questions about the data supplied (or not) for rankings, we can’t help but suspect culpability there. Regardless of who’s to blame, Charter depends heavily on its reputation to attract students, so the snub — inadvertent or otherwise — could prove costly.

While the state education department might also have dropped the ball on other districts whose data doesn’t appear in the report, most public high schools probably aren’t hurt like Charter. Sadly, too few parents do intensive comparisons to find the public high school that best meets the needs of their children. For most, school boundaries do the deciding. We believe the parents who do compare are far better served visiting the competing high schools, talking to staff, faculty and other parents, rather than relying on the snapshot of a national magazine with its fingers in a handful of databases.

Ratings of schools at any level can be useful, but ratings never come close to telling the whole story. Some universities ranked middling or worse have exceptional colleges within; some programs at highly rated colleges are not up to the overall high standards of the institution. We also have seen employees who graduated from less prestigious universities outperform their peers from much higher-ranked institutions. The proof is in production, not parchment.

Someday, we believe, all schools will be graded on how their graduates do in life — not just how much money they make, but their impact on society and how happy they are in what they’ve chosen to do. But until then, there’s no substitute for rolling up your sleeves and doing your own homework.