Reinventing Remedial Education: 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 college.
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 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-fledged freshman.
