You're Not Going to Believe How Many Valedictorians There Are in One Ohio School District

From the Columbus Dispatch:

Graduation ceremonies might still be going on if Dublin schools had asked all of its valedictorians to speak.

There were 222 of them.

That means two out of every 10 graduates at Dublin’s three high schools received top honors this year. Dublin Scioto had 44 valedictorians, Dublin Jerome had 82, and Dublin Coffman had 96.

“I can’t say I’ve heard of that many,” said David Hawkins, executive director for educational content and policy with the National Association of College Admissions Counseling. He’s aware of high schools with 20-some valedictorians in a class but not as many as Coffman’s.

In the Dublin school district, valedictorian honors are awarded to all seniors with at least a 4.1 grade-point average, which means that 222 students in the district achieved perfect grades though all four years of high school — plus an extra tenth of a point, likely for an honors class.

It used to be that the valedictorian was the top-performing student in the school. These days — largely because of grade inflation, where a “C” is not average and an “A” does not represent a mark of exceptional effort and achievement — the top of the class is becoming an increasingly crowded field and it’s impossible for a truly excellent student to distinguish himself from the pack.