Stand and Deliver
| Stand and Deliver | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Ramón Menéndez |
| Produced by | Tom Musca |
| Written by |
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| Starring | |
| Music by | Craig Safan |
| Cinematography | Tom Richmond |
| Edited by | Nancy Richardson |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
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Release date
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Running time
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102 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $1,600,000 |
| Box office | $13,994,920 |
Stand and Deliver is a 1988 American drama film based on the true story of high school math teacher Jaime Escalante. Edward James Olmos portrayed Escalante in the film and received a nomination for Best Actor at the 61st Academy Awards. The film was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 2011.
Jaime Escalante (Olmos) becomes a math teacher at James A. Garfield High School in Eastern Los Angeles. The school is full of Hispanic students from working-class families who are way below their grade level in terms of academic skills and have a lot of social problems. Escalante seeks to change the school culture to help the students excel in academics. He soon realizes the untapped potential of his class and sets a goal of having the students taking AP Calculus by their senior year. Escalante instructs his class under the philosophy of "ganas", roughly translating into "desire" or "motivation".
The students begin taking summer classes in advanced mathematics with Escalante having to withstand the cynicism of the other faculty, who feel the students are not capable enough. As the students struggle with the lower expectations they face in society, Escalante helps them overcome this adversity and pass the AP Calculus exams. To his dismay, the Educational Testing Service questions the success of the students, insisting there is too much overlap in their errors and suggests the students cheated. Escalante defends his students, feeling that the allegations are based more on racial and economic perceptions. He offers to have the students retake the test months later and the students all succeed in passing the test again, despite only having a day to prepare, dispelling all concerns of cheating.
Ten of the students agreed to sign waivers, so as to allow the College Board to show Jay Mathews, author of Escalante: The Best Teacher in America, their exam papers. Mathews found that nine of the ten had made "identical silly mistakes" on free response question Number 6. Mathews heard from two of the students that during the exam a piece of paper had been passed around with that flawed solution. Twelve students (including the nine with the identical mistakes) retook the exam, and most of them received 4 and 5 on the 5-point exam. In 1987, 27 percent of all Mexican Americans who scored 3 or higher on the calculus AP exam were students at Garfield High. Mathews wrote in The Los Angeles Times that the Ana Delgado character "was the only teenage character in the film based on a real person" and that her real name was not used.
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