Wednesday, March 31, 2010
AP
Jaime Escalante is shown teaching math at Garfield High in 1988.
Jaime Escalante is shown teaching math at Garfield High in 1988.
(03-30) 04:00 PDT Los Angeles - --
Jaime Escalante, the charismatic former East Los Angeles high school teacher who taught the nation that inner-city students could master subjects as demanding as calculus, died Tuesday. He was 79.
The subject of the 1988 box-office hit "Stand and Deliver," Mr. Escalante died at his son's home in Roseville (Placer County), said actor Edward James Olmos, who portrayed the teacher in the film. Mr. Escalante had bladder cancer.
"Jaime didn't just teach math. Like all great teachers, he changed lives," Olmos said this month when he organized an appeal for funds to help pay Escalante's mounting medical bills.
Mr. Escalante gained national prominence in the aftermath of a 1982 scandal surrounding 14 of his Garfield High School students who passed the strenuous Advanced Placement calculus exam only to be accused later of cheating.
The story of their eventual triumph - and of Escalante's battle to raise standards at a struggling campus of working-class, largely Mexican American students - became the subject of the movie, which turned the balding, middle-aged Bolivian immigrant into the most famous teacher in America.
Mr. Escalante's rise came during an era decried by experts as one of alarming mediocrity in the nation's schools. He pushed for tougher standards and accountability for students and educators, often nettling colleagues and parents along the way with his brusque manner and uncompromising stands.
Backed Prop. 227
He was called a traitor for his opposition to bilingual education. He said the hate mail he received for championing Proposition 227, the successful 1997 ballot measure to dismantle bilingual programs in California, was a factor in his decision to retire in 1998 after leaving Garfield and teaching at Hiram Johnson High School in Sacramento for seven years.
Mr. Escalante was born Dec. 31, 1930, in La Paz, Bolivia, and was raised by his mother after his parents, both teachers, broke up when he was about 9. He attended a well-regarded Jesuit high school, San Calixto, where his quick mind and penchant for mischief often got him into trouble.
After high school he served in the army during a short-lived Bolivian rebellion. Although he had toyed with the idea of engineering school in Argentina, he wound up enrolling at the state teachers college, Normal Superior. Before he graduated he was teaching at three top-rated Bolivian schools. He also married Fabiola Tapia, a fellow student at the college.
At his wife's urging, Mr. Escalante gave up his teaching posts for the promise of a brighter future in America for their firstborn, Jaime Jr. (A second son, Fernando, would follow.) With $3,000 in his pocket and little more than "yes" and "no" in his English vocabulary, Mr. Escalante flew alone to Los Angeles on Christmas Eve, 1963.
Drawn to classroom
His first job was mopping floors in a coffee shop across the street from Pasadena City College, where he enrolled in English classes. But the classroom still beckoned to the teacher inside him. He earned a scholarship to California State University, Los Angeles, to pursue a teaching credential. In the fall of 1974, when he was 43, he took a pay cut to begin teaching at Garfield High for $13,000 a year.
Mr. Escalante soon developed a reputation for turning around hard-to-motivate students. By 1978, he had 14 students enrolled in his first AP calculus class. Of the five who survived his stiff homework and attendance demands, only two earned passing scores on the exam. But in 1980, seven of nine students passed the exam; in 1981, 14 of 15 passed.
In 1982, he had 18 students to prepare for the academic challenge of their young lives.
Mr. Escalante was hospitalized twice in the months leading up to the AP exam. He had a heart attack while teaching night school but ignored doctors' orders to rest and was back at Garfield the next day.
The Advanced Placement program qualifies students for college credit if they pass the exam with a score of 3 or higher. For many years it was a tool of the elite; the calculus exam, for example, was taken by only about 3 percent of American high school math students when Mr. Escalante revived the program at Garfield in the late 1970s.
Trying AP exams
In 1982, a record 69 Garfield students were taking AP exams in various subjects, including Spanish and history. Escalante's calculus students took their exam in May under the watchful eye of the school's head counselor.
The results, released over the summer, were stunning: All 18 of his students passed, with seven earning the highest score of 5. But the good news quickly turned bad.
The Educational Testing Service, which administers the exam, said it had found suspicious similarities in the solutions given on 14 exams. It invalidated those scores.
Vindication came in a retest. Of the 14 accused of wrongdoing, 12 took the exam again and passed.
After that, the numbers of Garfield students taking calculus and other Advanced Placement classes soared. By 1987, only four high schools in the country had more students taking and passing the AP calculus exam than Garfield.
This article appeared on page C - 6 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/30/MNJ71CNKM8.DTL
Jaime Escalante, the charismatic former East Los Angeles high school teacher who taught the nation that inner-city students could master subjects as demanding as calculus, died Tuesday. He was 79.
The subject of the 1988 box-office hit "Stand and Deliver," Mr. Escalante died at his son's home in Roseville (Placer County), said actor Edward James Olmos, who portrayed the teacher in the film. Mr. Escalante had bladder cancer.
"Jaime didn't just teach math. Like all great teachers, he changed lives," Olmos said this month when he organized an appeal for funds to help pay Escalante's mounting medical bills.
Mr. Escalante gained national prominence in the aftermath of a 1982 scandal surrounding 14 of his Garfield High School students who passed the strenuous Advanced Placement calculus exam only to be accused later of cheating.
The story of their eventual triumph - and of Escalante's battle to raise standards at a struggling campus of working-class, largely Mexican American students - became the subject of the movie, which turned the balding, middle-aged Bolivian immigrant into the most famous teacher in America.
Mr. Escalante's rise came during an era decried by experts as one of alarming mediocrity in the nation's schools. He pushed for tougher standards and accountability for students and educators, often nettling colleagues and parents along the way with his brusque manner and uncompromising stands.
Backed Prop. 227
He was called a traitor for his opposition to bilingual education. He said the hate mail he received for championing Proposition 227, the successful 1997 ballot measure to dismantle bilingual programs in California, was a factor in his decision to retire in 1998 after leaving Garfield and teaching at Hiram Johnson High School in Sacramento for seven years.
Mr. Escalante was born Dec. 31, 1930, in La Paz, Bolivia, and was raised by his mother after his parents, both teachers, broke up when he was about 9. He attended a well-regarded Jesuit high school, San Calixto, where his quick mind and penchant for mischief often got him into trouble.
After high school he served in the army during a short-lived Bolivian rebellion. Although he had toyed with the idea of engineering school in Argentina, he wound up enrolling at the state teachers college, Normal Superior. Before he graduated he was teaching at three top-rated Bolivian schools. He also married Fabiola Tapia, a fellow student at the college.
At his wife's urging, Mr. Escalante gave up his teaching posts for the promise of a brighter future in America for their firstborn, Jaime Jr. (A second son, Fernando, would follow.) With $3,000 in his pocket and little more than "yes" and "no" in his English vocabulary, Mr. Escalante flew alone to Los Angeles on Christmas Eve, 1963.
Drawn to classroom
His first job was mopping floors in a coffee shop across the street from Pasadena City College, where he enrolled in English classes. But the classroom still beckoned to the teacher inside him. He earned a scholarship to California State University, Los Angeles, to pursue a teaching credential. In the fall of 1974, when he was 43, he took a pay cut to begin teaching at Garfield High for $13,000 a year.
Mr. Escalante soon developed a reputation for turning around hard-to-motivate students. By 1978, he had 14 students enrolled in his first AP calculus class. Of the five who survived his stiff homework and attendance demands, only two earned passing scores on the exam. But in 1980, seven of nine students passed the exam; in 1981, 14 of 15 passed.
In 1982, he had 18 students to prepare for the academic challenge of their young lives.
Mr. Escalante was hospitalized twice in the months leading up to the AP exam. He had a heart attack while teaching night school but ignored doctors' orders to rest and was back at Garfield the next day.
The Advanced Placement program qualifies students for college credit if they pass the exam with a score of 3 or higher. For many years it was a tool of the elite; the calculus exam, for example, was taken by only about 3 percent of American high school math students when Mr. Escalante revived the program at Garfield in the late 1970s.
Trying AP exams
In 1982, a record 69 Garfield students were taking AP exams in various subjects, including Spanish and history. Escalante's calculus students took their exam in May under the watchful eye of the school's head counselor.
The results, released over the summer, were stunning: All 18 of his students passed, with seven earning the highest score of 5. But the good news quickly turned bad.
The Educational Testing Service, which administers the exam, said it had found suspicious similarities in the solutions given on 14 exams. It invalidated those scores.
Vindication came in a retest. Of the 14 accused of wrongdoing, 12 took the exam again and passed.
After that, the numbers of Garfield students taking calculus and other Advanced Placement classes soared. By 1987, only four high schools in the country had more students taking and passing the AP calculus exam than Garfield.
This article appeared on page C - 6 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/30/MNJ71CNKM8.DTL
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