Calculus does not have to be made easy--it is easy already. That banner used to grace the Los Angeles classroom of someone once called the best teacher in America. Jaime Escalante, the unconventional calculus teacher who was depicted by Edward James Olmos in the 1988 film Stand and Deliver , died last year of cancer at the age of 79. The year before the film, more students from Garfield High School took the AP calculus exam than at all but three other public schools in the country, with two thirds passing.
Half a year after his death the Obama administration weighed in on the state of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education in this country. The report, “Prepare and Inspire,” reviewed the sobering statistics about how our K–12 schools suffer by comparison to their counterparts in other developed nations. It called for recruiting and training 100,000 STEM teachers. President Barack Obama mentioned STEM as a priority in his State of the Union address this year, and advocates for science education have been pressing to get student science performance incorporated into the No Child Left Behind law.
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