Historical Accuracy
Ten of the students agreed to sign waivers so that the College Board could show Jay Mathews, author of Escalante: The Best Teacher in America, their exam papers. Mathews found that nine of the ten had made "identical silly mistakes" on free-response question Number 6. Mathews heard two of the students passed around a piece of paper with that flawed solution during the exam. Twelve students (including the nine with the identical mistakes) retook the exam, most of them got 4s and 5s on the 5 point exam. In 1987, 27 percent of all Mexican Americans who scored 3 or higher on the calculus AP exam were students at Garfield High.
Escalante actually first began teaching at Garfield High School in 1974 and taught his first AP Calculus course in 1978 with a group of 14 students. Only five students remained in the course at the end of the year and of the five, only two passed the AP Calculus exam.
Read more about this topic: Stand And Deliver
Famous quotes containing the words historical and/or accuracy:
“The past itself, as historical change continues to accelerate, has become the most surreal of subjects—making it possible ... to see a new beauty in what is vanishing.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“In everything from athletic ability to popularity to looks, brains, and clothes, children rank themselves against others. At this age [7 and 8], children can tell you with amazing accuracy who has the coolest clothes, who tells the biggest lies, who is the best reader, who runs the fastest, and who is the most popular boy in the third grade.”
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