Stand and Deliver Revisited (Jaime Escalante)

Thanks to the popular 1988 movie Stand and Deliver,many Americans know of the success that Jaime Escalante and hisstudents enjoyed at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles.during the 1980s, that exceptional teacher at a poor public schoolbuilt a calculus program rivaled by only a handful of exclusiveacademies.

It is less well-known that Escalante left Garfield afterproblems with colleagues and administrators, and that his calculusprogram withered in his absence. That untold story highlights muchthat is wrong with public schooling in the United States and offerssome valuable insights into the workings — and failings — of oureducation system.

Escalante’s students surprised the nation in 1982, when 18 ofthem passed the Advanced Placement calculus exam. The EducationalTesting Service found the scores suspect and asked 14 of thepassing students to take the test again. twelve agreed to do so(the other two decided they didn’t need the credit for college),and all 12 did well enough to have their scores reinstated.

In the ensuing years, Escalante’s calculus program grewphenomenally. In 1983 both enrollment in his class and the numberof students passing the A.P. calculus test more than doubled, with33 taking the exam and 30 passing it. In 1987, 73 passed the test,and another 12 passed a more advanced version (“BC”) usually givenafter the second year of calculus.

That goal was never met. In 1991 Escalante decided to leaveGarfield. All his fellow math enrichment teachers soon left aswell. By 1996, the dynasty was not even a minor fiefdom. Only sevenstudents passed the regular (“AB”) test that year, with fourpassing the BC exam — 11 students total, down from a high of85.

In any field but education, the combination of such a dramaticrise and such a precipitous fall would have invited analysis. if ateam begins losing after a coach is replaced, sports fans areoutraged. The decline of Garfield’s math program, however, wentlargely unnoticed.

Movie Magic

Most of us, educators included, learned what we know ofEscalante’s experience from Stand and Deliver. For morethan a decade it has been a staple in high school classes, collegeeducation classes, and faculty workshops. Unfortunately, too manystudents and teachers learned the wrong lesson from the movie.

Escalante tells me the film was 90 percent truth and 10 percentdrama — but what a difference 10 percent can make. Stand andDeliver shows a group of poorly prepared, undisciplined youngpeople who were initially struggling with fractions yet managed tomove from basic math to calculus in just a year. The reality wasfar different. it took 10 years to bring Escalante’s program topeak success. He didn’t even teach his first calculus course untilhe had been at Garfield for several years. His basic math studentsfrom his early years were not the same students who later passedthe A.P. calculus test.

Escalante says he was so discouraged by his students’ poorpreparation that after only two hours in class he called his formeremployer, the Burroughs Corporation, and asked for his old jobback. He decided not to return to the computer factory after hefound a dozen basic math students who were willing to take algebraand was able to make arrangements with the principal and counselorsto accommodate them.

Escalante’s situation improved as time went by, but it was notuntil his fifth year at Garfield that he tried to teach calculus.although he felt his students were not adequately prepared, hedecided to teach the class anyway in the hope that the existence ofan A.P. calculus course would create the leverage necessary toimprove lower-level math classes.

His plan worked. He and a handpicked teacher, Ben Jimenez,taught the feeder courses. In 1979 he had only five calculusstudents, two of whom passed the A.P. test. (Escalante had to dosome bureaucratic sleight of hand to be allowed to teach such atiny class.) The second year, he had nine calculus students, sevenof whom passed the test. A year later, 15 students took the class,and all but one passed. The year after that, 1982, was the year ofthe events depicted in Stand and Deliver.

The Stand and Deliver message, that the touch of amaster could bring unmotivated students from arithmetic to calculusin a single year, was preached in schools throughout the nation.while the film did a great service to education by showing whatstudents from disadvantaged backgrounds can achieve in demandingclasses, the Hollywood fiction had at least one negative sideeffect. By showing students moving from fractions to calculus in asingle year, it gave the false impression that students can neglecttheir studies for several years and then be redeemed by a fewmonths of hard work.

This Hollywood message had a pernicious effect on teachertraining. The lessons of Escalante’s patience and hard work inbuilding his program, especially his attention to the classes thatfed into calculus, were largely ignored in the faculty workshopsand college education classes that routinely showed Stand andDeliver to their students. To the pedagogues, how Escalantesucceeded mattered less than the mere fact that he succeeded. Theywere happy to cheer Escalante the icon; they were less interestedin learning from Escalante the teacher. They were like physiciansgetting excited about a colleague who can cure cancer withoutwanting to know how to replicate the cure.

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