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Stand and Deliver Teacher Jaime Escalante Dies
DesScorp writes "Jaime Escalante, the math teacher portrayed in the hit '80s movie Stand and Deliver, has died of cancer at age 79. Escalante is legendary for creating the advanced math 'pipeline' program at Garfield High in East Los Angeles in the '70s and '80s, an area populated mostly by poorer Hispanic families. Escalante's students eventually outpaced even richer schools in advanced placement tests for calculus. Escalante refused to accept excuses from his students or community about why they couldn't succeed, and demanded a standard of excellence from them, defying the notion that poor Hispanic kids just weren't capable of advanced work. While Escalante became a celebrity because of the hit movie about his efforts, jealousy from other teachers ... as well as red tape from teacher's unions and the public school bureaucracy, resulted in Escalante and his hand-picked teachers leaving Garfield. Since his departure, Garfield has never replicated Escalante's success with math students, and Reason Magazine reported on the shameful way in which others tore down what Escalante and his teachers worked so hard to build."
Yeah, but Reason magazine is one of those pseudo-libertarian GOP shilling rags.
Not to say that the article is wrong or its information is false; just that people interested in rational, fact-based inquiry would want to see the information confirmed by another source.
Preferably, not another right wing bullshit factory.
After reading the article, I can only be outraged by Maria Elena Tostado, the administrator who let political expediency outweigh academic legitimacy.I guess the lesson, we should learn from this is that evil wins. I can think of dozens of examples from my own life where the dogs have won.
The only lesson, that I can learn from this affair, is that we need more guns in schools.
-Regards.
Jaime died just the once. Not habitually.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
Set the bar high and the kids will reach for it, set the bar low and kids will nap.
Why would we want to set the bar high? The whole point of public school is to produce indoctrinated Americans who will be good workers and not question things. No one needs to know Calculus to make coffee at Starbuck's or work at the mall.