Jaime Escalante

Jaime Alfonso Escalante Gutiérrez was born on December 31, 1930, in La Paz, Bolivia, into a family of Aymara schoolteachers. He studied at the Normal Superior in La Paz and taught mathematics and physics in Bolivian secondary schools through the 1950s and early 1960s, while building a reputation for unconventional, theatrical classroom methods.

In 1963, fearing the political instability of his country, Escalante emigrated to the United States with his wife and son. Without recognized credentials he worked as a busboy and then as an electronics technician while attending night classes, eventually earning a bachelor's degree at California State University, Los Angeles, and a California teaching certificate.

In 1974 he joined Garfield High School in East Los Angeles, a school then on the verge of losing accreditation. Over the next decade Escalante built a calculus program in which working-class Latino students sat for the Advanced Placement Calculus exam in growing numbers. In 1982, eighteen of his students passed the AP exam; the Educational Testing Service questioned the results, but the students retook a harder version and passed again.

The story became the 1988 film Stand and Deliver, in which Edward James Olmos played Escalante and earned an Academy Award nomination. Escalante later taught at Hiram Johnson High School in Sacramento and returned to Bolivia in 2008. He died on March 30, 2010, in Roseville, California.

The name Jaime is the Spanish form of James, ultimately from the Hebrew Ya'aqov (Jacob), meaning supplanter or one who follows. It is a common given name across the Spanish-speaking world. He wore the name as a quiet supplanter himself, replacing low expectations of his students with the demand that they rise.