One in five students at this high school were valedictorians.

Dalton Miller of The Washington Post reports:

Here’s how my graduating class ended up with 72 valedictorians

In the final week of May, 222 graduates from one Ohio school district flung their caps in the air while claiming the same title: valedictorian. One in every five graduates from Dublin City Schools went home with that highest academic honor. The district’s valedictorian roll has been rising for years. In 2014, I graduated as one of 72 valedictorians from Dublin Jerome High School.

Understandably, these numbers confuse a lot of people. How can more than one student earn the highest GPA? How can more than one give the valedictory speech at graduation? Every class can have just one highest achiever, right? Generally, that’s true. But the administrators of Dublin school district, and a growing number of school districts across the country, see things differently. In Dublin, every student earning a GPA above 4.1 is deemed a valedictorian. Traditionalists argue that this system degrades the distinction. Maybe so, but the merits of this approach are far greater. Creating a system that promotes personal achievement over unhealthy competition and that rewards hard-working students without hindering anyone’s ability to succeed should be applauded.