Jaime Escalante, the 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, Calif., 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 earlier this month when he organized an appeal for funds to help pay Mr. Escalante's mounting medical bills.
Mr. Escalante gained national prominence when 14 of his Garfield High School students passed the strenuous Advanced Placement calculus exam in 1982, only to be accused later of cheating. The story of their eventual triumph -- and of Mr. Escalante's battle to raise standards at a struggling campus of working-class, largely Mexican American students -- became the subject of the movie. It also turned the balding, middle-aged Bolivian immigrant into the most famous teacher in America.