Couple of things to point out that I haven't seen yet.
1st= at the smaller schools, your athletic kids are playing all sports. Not just one. At the larger schools, don't most of these kids usually concentrate on one sport year around?
2nd= in order to truly judge this, shouldn't you be looking at the percentage of kids that go on to the next level based on school population? If you have 1 kid out of 300 students at the 2A high school make it to the next level, wouldn't that be the same as 5 kids out of a 1500 school pop playing at the college level?
I would say check your percentages and this will tell you if small school is equal to big school. Not knowing which off hand, I would say that they are pretty close to equal. Athletes can be found at all levels. There are more at larger schools naturally because of the numbers. Now all things considered, I can see where recruiters or coaches may spend more time at 4-5a schools. Maybe it's because of the percentages or maybe these kids are playing at a higher level because there are more players of quality on that team to raise their game or they play all somewhere year around. I will not believe though that you must leave the numbers out like you stated in the very first post.