Getting College Credits While Doing Hard Time
By Brian McKinney Sr.
Imagine yourself in prison. It’s a bleak picture. And you’re probably living on the edge of hopelessness. How can you shake off the crippling freeze in your mind? Any psychologist, priest, advisor and everybody’s mother, too, will say you should take action today. That will insure a vigorous tomorrow, a successful reentry, which supplies the difference between where you are now and where you want to be.
Where am I now? I’m a 28-year-old black man, doing prison time at the Ojibway Correctional Facility in the middle of a barren wooded landscape in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The emptiness of the land mirrors the feeling of prison life. How did I end up in prison? I broke the law. I was arrested for drug trafficking and gun possession. I was 24-year-old and looking for easy money. I made some bad choices. My prison sentence, four years to 20 years, reflects the current broad range of sentencing guidelines. My earliest release date is 2012. If I have to serve the maximum length of prison time, I won’t be released until I’m 45 years old. If it was a movie, this part of my life doesn’t get a sequel.
What about tomorrow and reentry? Since all I’ve got is time, I’m using it. To build a realistic future, I’m self-studying several college courses now. Better yet, I’m paying for and taking the college-level tests for those courses, earning those college credits. My goals are practical and amplified: my credits will give me a faster start when I’m released, re-entered, and enrolled in college. Then I’ll continue on to graduate school at Yale University. Now that’s a future worth pursuing. The stakes are high, and I won’t settle for less. Putting it mildly, I am motivated.
Despite all the talk recently about reentry there is nothing happening at Ojibway — or at any prison I know of — doing anything to help a guy like me who needs college-level courses. The only teaching going on is focused on helping prisoners get a GED. This isn’t a criticism it’s simply stating a fact. Before I discovered the self-study route my only way to get college credit was to take a college correspondence course. That’s out of the question for most prisoners. It’s very expensive. It’s too costly for me with my prison wage at less than a dollar a day. Self-study and then paying to take the test to pass the course is my only financial option. And it works thanks to the College Board.
The College Board offers CLEP tests. An alphabet soup of letters, CLEP stands for College Level Examination Program. I discovered CLEP tests when I was researching ways to earn college credits in the most cost-effective way possible. You get college credit by self-studying for a variety of beginning college courses. Then you take a test to see if you’ve mastered that specific course material. Each test costs approximately one hundred dollars. That’s a big bill for most prisoners. But it’s within their reach, by inches.
It always drives me crazy with envy when I talk with the older prisoners who were once able to enroll in college classes while in prison. At a time with less economic stress and more constructive penal programs the college correspondence courses were paid for by the Federal Government.
“I feel good about earning college credit
for myself. But I feel even better about
bringing a program to the prison that
helps others.” – Brian McKinney Sr.
Those days are over. To make my self-study idea work for me and for others I needed the favorable nod from the prison warden. A prison is only as good as the warden who runs it. Word in the yard at Ojibway was that the new warden supported programs for prisoners. That always makes sense. If (for no other reason) plenty of prison programs of all kinds make for a safer prison and reduce prisoner idleness.
So, one day, as I saw her walking in the yard we did a little informal CLEP talk. A smart and commanding woman with an obvious gift for leadership and practical problem solving, she seemed interested in self- study and CLEP. Keep in mind that prison is not like the real world. Things that seem normal … like walking up and talking to someone … can land a prisoner in solitary confinement. Yes, this warden will allow prisoners to speak with her. And she listens.
So, who else would help me?
Our librarian at Ojibway has a reputation for being service-oriented so we talked about how the library was the logical place for college-level self-study. As a prisoner I’ve learned to keep my expectations low when voicing new ideas for prisoner programs. I was hoping for — at the most — mild interest. Almost to my surprise the librarian got so excited about CLEP that he was practically ricocheting off the walls. He was extremely supportive and things happened fast. He did research on the College Board’s web site to get more information on the CLEP policy and study materials. He spoke with the school principal who agreed to proctor the CLEP tests.
Suddenly the train was on the tracks and heading for the station. The warden (true to her initial interest) greased the tracks to get the program going … including making it easier for prisoners to get used college textbooks. Remember that it’s hard to do new things in a prison environment. Without the warden’s support the self-study project would have had little hope.
As the word about CLEP spread other prisoners became involved. Not only were other prisoners interested in taking tests but we found prisoners, many with college degrees, who would become tutors.
Soon the library at Ojibway became — at times — more like a college library. After regular library hours the library was kept open so that prisoners could study in groups. It was great to see. You could see attitudes changing before your eyes.
“Let’s cut to the chase. Does the self-study program
work? Did I pass the CLEP tests? Did the other
prisoners pass the CLEP tests? You bet we did.
In fact, to date the success rate is 100 percent.”
– Brian McKinney Sr.
Prisoners involved in CLEP also made a pledge to be “better than good,” realizing that any bad behavior might end the program. One has to face the facts: strangely enough, many prison staff are actively non-supportive of prisoner improvement and almost seem to want prisoners to fail.
Let’s cut to the chase. Does the self-study program work? Did I pass the CLEP tests? Did the other prisoners pass the CLEP tests? You bet we did. In fact, to date the success rate is 100 percent.
But there’s more. One thing leads to another. With the CLEP success behind us we focused our attention on yet another way to earn college credits. Of particular interest is Advanced Placement testing (AP), the extremely demanding test program sponsored by (once again) the College Board. Given only once a year, it’s the Olympics of college testing.
AP testing is not done in any prison in Michigan at all. Only a handful of prisons in the entire United States are doing AP testing. Since we want to put ourselves on the map for scholarly excellence, we just have to do Advanced Placement testing at Ojibway. And we have to do it good.
Currently 15 prisoners at Ojibway are studying hard for the May-2011 Advanced Placement test. We’re turning hard time into study time. Will we succeed? Given our motivation and track record to date the odds are that we will do very well with AP testing … just as we have with the CLEP tests.
I feel good about earning college credit for myself. But I feel even better about bringing a program to the prison that helps others. The librarian calls us the McKinney Scholars (like the Rhodes Scholars), and that’s a real compliment. If you were to see me now, you would see a smile on my face.
For more information on the CLEP and AP Programs at the Ojibway Correctional Facility, contact librarian Thomas Lee by e-mail at leetg@michigan.gov.
This article is an extract from Reentry Advocate Volume 5, Issue 1-2, Jan./Feb., 2011