But how do they keep track of all that even so? e.g. school district lines get redrawn all the time. And each school of sufficient size has AP or IB tracks anyway, which basically kills any comparison. And within those, there may even be a further tiering between magnets that select on aptitude etc etc... and what reporting requirements do schools even have? is this mandated by law? the more data you introduce the more it needs to be corrected for; you know like those "10 best cities to ..." listicles.

I don't know. Look at parent's address, correlate with census and income, look at SAT, and be done with it. Solved lol.