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In his haste to malign the school district and Sandpoint High School in his May 2 letter to the editor, Mr. Jeremy Conlin cites Sandpoint High’s “meager” 26.0 College Readiness Index used by US News & World Reports to determine its ranking of second best high school in the state.

Mr. Conlin wrongly assumes that this means that “more than two-thirds of students are not prepared for college-level classes.” Had he bothered to “drill down” into US News’ methodology, he would have discovered that the College Readiness Index is actually a measure based on the percentage of students in the high school who take and pass an Advanced Placement exam during or before their senior year. Taking and passing one of these exams can earn you a college credit. Therefore, the index is a measure of students ready, willing, and able to take college-level courses while still in high school. It is not, therefore, as the name implies and Mr. Conlin wrongly assumes, a measure of all students’ preparedness to take college-level coursework after they leave high school. Incidentally, the national median College Readiness Index the year the high schools were ranked was 20.91.

TODD RILEY

Sandpoint