When Kafayat Olayinka graduated from Spingarn High School in Washington, D. C., with a 3.5 grade point average, she was certain those kinds of grades would help her zip right through her college years.
Sure enough, Olayinka received a letter of acceptance from the University of the District of Columbia, along with a request that she take a battery of tests given all freshmen. Soon, though, she realized something was wrong.
“I couldn’t solve problems in basic math,” Olayinka says, recalling the summer of 2007 when she took the placement exams. “I was surprised. I thought I was going to pass the tests.” Despite the disappointing experience that made her doubt her readiness for college, Olayinka was notified she had been accepted into a special eight-week pre-college program at UDC called the Gateway Academic Program, or the GAP.
It wasn’t until the end of the GAP, when Olayinka was tested again, that she learned her true academic story. She and her cohorts selected for the GAP had actually posted the lowest scores in English and math of all entering freshmen who took the original placement tests. By the end of the eight weeks of rigorous classroom work aimed specifically at the deficiencies found in her first tests, she was tested again and her performance on the second tests cleared her to enter the school as a full-fl edged freshman.
“By then it was too late to quit,” Olayinka laughs, when asked why she didn’t toss in the towel after learning how far behind she was at her college’s starting gate. Today, the 21-year-old junior majoring in physics says she’s doing “wonderful” in English and math and set to graduate in the traditional four years. Her grade point average is 3.0, and she’s got the knowledge to prove it.
A decade ago, Olayinka would more likely have been another number among the thousands of students who enter college each year, only to drop out after learning they were not prepared for college work. Their schools — not all but far too many — were not prepared, or seriously interested, in bringing them up to speed and retaining them. Access, not success, was the operative phrase in past decades for many two- and four-year institutions. Remedial education, although widely used and disguised with other names, was rarely talked about for it could tarnish a school’s reputation, if widely discussed.
Today, more and more colleges and universities are ditching the old stigma associated with remedial education, reinventing their remedial education and retention programs and, in the process, helping shore up America’s higher education system.
