Jaime Escalante Biography

Jaime Escaslante Born on December 31, 1930 in La Paz, Bolivia. The child of two teachers, Escalante became one of the most famous educators in America during the 1980s and 1990s. He left Bolivia in 1960s to seek a better life in the United States. An educator back at home, he had to work many odd jobs, teach himself English, and earn another college degree before he could return to the classroom.


Jaime Escalante cared about kids. Not about teachers’ unions or partisan politics or educrat ass-covering or racial grievance-mongering. The Bolivian-born physics and math teacher demanded excellence and hard work, raised standards and expectations, and defied critics and naysayers by teaching algebra and calculus to East L.A. high school students whom the government school system had abandoned and written off. Escalante’s amazing results were made famous by education reporter Jay Matthews’ book

Jaime Escalante passed away today. He was the teacher who mentored minority kids in East LA and drove them to pass a rigorous national calculus exam. Escalante was featured in the 1988 semibio film.

Jaime Escalante was born in La Paz Bolivia. He lived his life inspiring all types of people within the education system but with small money left to treat his terminal bladder cancer. While living in Bolivia he taught physics and mathematics for nine years. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2. To prepare he started studying science and mathematics at University

Escalante took a job at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles in 1974, California. He found himself in a challenging situation: teaching math to troubled students in a rundown school known for violence and drugs. While some had dismissed the students as "unteachable," Escalante strove to reach his students and to get them to live up to their potential. He started an advanced mathematics program with a handful of students. In 1982 his largest class of students took and passed an advanced placement test in Calculus. Some of the students' test scores were invalidated by the testing company because it believed that the students had cheated. Escalante protested, saying that the students had been disqualified because they were Hispanic and from a poor school. A few months later many of the students retook the test and passed, proving that they knew the material and that the company was wrong.


source:biography.com
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