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Stand and Deliver Revisited
After Stand and Deliver was released, Escalante became an overnight celebrity. Teachers and other interested observers asked to sit in on his classes, and he received visits from political leaders and celebrities. This attention aroused feelings of jealousy. In his last few years at Garfield, Escalante even received threats and hate mail. In 1990 he lost the math department chairmanship, the position that had enabled him to direct the pipeline.
A number of people at Garfield still have unkind words for the school's most famous instructor. One administrator tells me Escalante wanted too much power. Some teachers complained that he was creating two math departments, one for his students and another for everyone else. When Escalante quit his job at Garfield, John Perez, a vice president of the teachers union, said, "Jaime didn't get along with some of the teachers at his school. He pretty much was a loner."
In addition, Escalante's relationship with his new principal, Maria Elena Tostado, was not as good as the one he had enjoyed with Gradillas. Tostado speaks harshly about her former calculus teachers, telling the Los Angeles Times they're disgruntled former employees. Of their complaints, she said, "Such backbiting only hurts the kids."
Escalante left the program in the charge of a handpicked successor, fellow Garfield teacher Angelo Villavicencio. When Escalante and Jimenez left in 1991, Villavicencio ascended to Garfield's calculus throne. The following year he taught all of Garfield's AB calculus students -- 107 of them, in two sections. Although that year's passing rate was not as high as it had been in previous years, it was still impressive, particularly considering that two-thirds of the calculus teachers had recently left and that Villavicencio was working with lecture-size classes. Seventy-six of his students went on to take the A.P. exam, and 47 passed.
That year was not easy for Villavicencio. The class-size problem that led to Escalante's departure had not been resolved. Villavicencio asked the administration to add a third section of calculus so he could get his class sizes below 40, but his request was denied. The principal attempted to remove him from Music Hall 1, the only room in the school that could comfortably accommodate 55 students. Villavicencio asked himself, "Am I going to have a heart attack defending the program?" The following spring he followed Escalante out Garfield's door.
http://reason.com/archives/2002/07/01/stand-and-deliver-revisited/