Stand and Deliver (1988) * * *

Directed by:  Ramon Menendez

Starring:  Edward James Olmos, Lou Diamond Phillips, Andy Garcia, Rosanna DeSoto, Bodie Olmos, Vanessa Marquez

Jaime Escalante was a real-life Los Angeles schoolteacher in the early 1980's who established one of the best AP high school calculus programs in the country from scratch.  The school where he just started working didn't have higher math programs, mostly because the administration didn't think the mostly Latino students could handle the work.   When Escalante reports to his first day of work, he finds a raucous, uninspired class.   But this isn't Dangerous Minds or even Lean on Me.  Escalante takes on a unique teaching style which outflanks his students and causes them to stay silent to hear what he has to say.  He acts strangely, but inspires confidence in them to the point that they are ready to take on trig and calculus.   His bosses think he is overreaching, but Escalante proves them wrong.  

Stand and Deliver is not a rousing biopic canonizing Jaime Escalante.  He is a middle-aged man who chose teaching as his new profession after working for years at tech companies.  He is able to change gang member Angel Guzman (Phillips) from delinquent to math whiz and get his students to buy into taking classes after school, on weekends, and during hot summers.   The students love math but they love the teacher more.  There are scenes involving the daily lives of some of the students, who toil at restaurant jobs or manual labor, which serve as a snapshot into their futures before Escalante came along.

Angel is the most fully developed supporting player.  He tells Escalante he carries one set of books for home and one for school, so his gang cronies don't see him actually engaging in schoolwork.  The success of Stand and Deliver rests on Edward James Olmos' Oscar-nominated performance.  He doesn't play Escalante as a saint, but a hard-working man who believes in his students and what he teaches them.  Later, after the entire class passes the state AP calculus exam, the results draw suspicions from the state due to the scores and the participants getting the same answers wrong.  This draws a fiery rebuke from Escalante, who points out that, as the instructor, he made the same mistakes teaching them.   Olmos imbues Escalante with an oddness which keeps everyone around him on their toes.  If Joe Clark from Lean on Me had fifty Escalantes in his school, it would have been whipped into shape a lot sooner.