4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit: SURPRISING TRUTHS FROM SUPERSTAR PRINCIPAL: "Standing and Delivering: What the Movie Didn't Tell"

4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit: SURPRISING TRUTHS FROM SUPERSTAR PRINCIPAL: "Standing and Delivering: What the Movie Didn't Tell"

SURPRISING TRUTHS FROM SUPERSTAR PRINCIPAL: "Standing and Delivering: What the Movie Didn't Tell"

BY JAY MATHEWS – CLASS STRUGGLE COLUMNIST IN THE WASHINGTON POST | HTTP://WAPO.ST/FW1ORZ

5:30 AM ET, 12/ 3/2010 - Henry Gradillas was the principal of Garfield High School in the 1980s when the chairman of its math department, a Bolivian immigrant named Jaime Escalante, became the most famous teacher in the United States. Escalante, about whom I wrote a book, was an amazing educator, but he would never have gained such renown and become the subject of the film "Stand and Deliver" if it had not been for Gradillas.

<>

Jaime Escalante >

I have never seen in action an urban high school principal as good as Gradillas [pronounced gra-DEE-us] was. His example influences everything I (and a lot of other people) think about how to make schools better.