Teacher who inspired 'Stand and Deliver' dies

“Jaime exposed one of the most dangerous myths of our time – that inner city students can't be expected to perform at the highest levels,” Edward James Olmos said. “Because of him, that destructive idea has been shattered forever". (from here)

The math teacher at a tough East Los Angeles high school who inspired the movie "Stand and Deliver," has died. He was 79. A family friend says Jaime Escalante died Tuesday in Reno, Nev., where he was undergoing treatment for bladder cancer.

An immigrant from Bolivia, he transformed Garfield High School by motivating struggling students to tackle and excel at advanced math and science. The school had more Advanced Placement calculus students than all but three other public high schools in the country.

Edward James Olmos played Escalante in the film based on his story. Olmos says Escalante proved that inner city students can perform at the highest levels, and left an important legacy for American education.

Associated Press

A 1988 file shows Jaime Escalante teaching math at Garfield High School in Los Angeles.

From the Wikipedia entree on Mr. Escalante:

Determined to change the status quo, Escalante had to persuade the first few students who would listen to him that they could control their futures with the right education. He promised them that the jobs would be in engineering, electronics and computers but they would have to learn math to succeed. He said to his students "I'll teach you math and that's your language. With that you're going to make it. You're going to college and sit in the first row, not the back, because you're going to know more than anybody".