The anniversary of the birth of Cesar Chavez is a fitting time to celebrate the life of Jaime Escalante, who died yesterday at the age of 79. In the ’80s, before the achievement gap was coined but when it was just as real, Escalante inspired students at Garfield High in Los Angeles to take — and pass the exam in — AP calculus. The spirit was infectious; within a few years, significant percentages of Latinos at the school were taking a range of AP courses. In 1987, more Garfield students took AP calculus exams than all but four high schools in America.
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