Math, Minus Escalante : Education: Fewer students are passing a calculus placement test since the acclaimed teacher left Garfield High.

Garfield High School just isn’t the same without Jaime Escalante. Since the acclaimed instructor left for a teaching job in Sacramento last year, disenchanted teachers and students from the East Los Angeles school say, the calculus program he established has lost its luster.

The proportion of Garfield students who passed calculus Advanced Placement exams this year dropped to 44% from 58% last year. Two of Escalante’s calculus teaching partners--Robert Jimenez and Angelo Villavicencio--also left the school, citing an unsupportive administration and faculty dissension.

“I still (get) at least one phone call a day from Garfield students or parents because they say nobody is looking out for them,” said Escalante, who taught at Garfield for 17 years before joining the faculty of Sacramento’s ethnically mixed Hiram Johnson High School.

Administrators at Garfield dispute charges that the math program is declining, saying that Garfield students’ good overall performance on the national exams and their excitement about learning prove that Advanced Placement classes are as successful as they were in Escalante’s heyday.

“Our program is better than ever, and the word on the street is that it’s going down the tubes,” Principal Maria Elena Tostado said, adding that taking Advanced Placement classes is still “the in thing” among students.

Between 1986 and 1991, the last year Escalante taught the class, an average of 61% of Garfield students who took the first-year calculus exam passed it, according to the Educational Testing Service, which administers the tests each spring. This year, the passing rate declined to 44%.

“That’s a very substantial drop,” Educational Testing Service researcher Jim Deneen said in an interview. “Something is definitely going on there, but it’s hard to put a finger on what might have caused it.”

Deneen suggested the decrease in the number of passing scores could have been caused by changes in the way the calculus courses were taught or in the homework requirements and other demands made on the students. The dip could also be a reflection of the abilities of last year’s class or the result of disruptions caused by the spring riots, which erupted a week before the exams were given.

“The numbers (44% passing) are still respectable on such a tough test,” Deneen said, “but 61%--that was very impressive.”

Garfield’s passing rate for the more difficult second-year exam also dropped this year. In 1991, 25 of 37 students passed the test, for a rate of 68%. In 1992, the rate fell to 58%, or 14 of 24 students.

Today, fewer than 20 Garfield students are enrolled in second-year calculus.

Students who take the AP exams, offered in 24 subjects nationwide each May, earn college credit if they earn a score of 3, 4 or 5.

Carole Stoner, Garfield’s Advanced Placement coordinator, said she is not alarmed by the dip in calculus scores, which typically rise and fall from year to year. Although administrators have taken measures to strengthen Advanced Placement classes in chemistry and other subjects in which students have long scored poorly, the school has no plans to change the calculus program, she said.

The most troublesome side effect of Escalante’s departure, administrators said, is that students, parents and others constantly compare Escalante and his two former partners with current teachers. Math teachers Ramsey Salem, Steve Sargent and Valentin Aguilera are under pressure to excel in Escalante’s long shadow.

“There are dozens of different, talented teaching personalities at Garfield, and it’s just not fair to hold them all up against Jaime,” Stoner said.

Aguilera, who has taught math at Garfield for five years but is teaching his first year of calculus, said his predecessors succeeded not only because of their mastery of calculus but because of their personalities and caring relationships with students.

“You can’t lose three masters and expect to replace them, especially not in one year,” Aguilera said. “It’s a very big legacy to live up to.”

Aguilera said some decline in scores and adjustment was to be expected after losing three experienced instructors. He also noted, however, that in general math ability has declined among students entering higher math classes.

“The skill level of students coming in is going down,” he said. “You have to bring them up to speed, and it can interfere with covering all the material that has to be covered in class.”

Aguilera also said that increasing class sizes contribute to “students getting lost in the shuffle,” and place extra demands on teachers to make sure students understand complicated concepts.

Former teachers, however, blamed the decline in scores on an unsympathetic administration and poor teaching, as well as on an education budget crisis.

“The quality is not there,” said Jimenez, a California Educator of the Year in 1989 who teaches math at Santa Monica College. “When you start passing kids with (low) Cs and Ds, the education quality suffers.”

Jimenez left the school in 1991 after clashing with Escalante and Garfield Principal Tostado over grading policy in the math department. Jimenez said that grading is too lax and that too many students are getting by without learning enough in class.

Villavicencio, who teaches at Ruben Ayala High School in Chino, said that current Garfield math instructors earnestly try to teach the students, but that they do not respond to students on a personal level.

“You have to make these kids believe in themselves and believe they can understand calculus,” Villavicencio said. “That is what we (Escalante, Jimenez and Villavicencio) did. You push them, but you treat them like family.”

Tostado dismissed the teachers’ criticisms, calling them disgruntled former employees. “Such backbiting only hurts the kids,” she said.

Despite the lower scores in calculus, the overall academic program at Garfield is stronger than in 1975, when the Western Assn. of Schools and Colleges called the gritty, gang-ridden school the worst in the Los Angeles Unified School District and threatened to remove its accreditation.

Escalante arrived at Garfield at the school’s low point. In 1978, with five bright students, he began to build a math program at the Eastside school. By 1982, he had 18 calculus students take the Advanced Placement exam.

The New Jersey-based ETS suspected 14 of those students of cheating because of their high scores and made them retake the test, an incident shown in the 1987 movie about Escalante, “Stand and Deliver.” Every student who retook the test passed it.

Since then the number of Garfield students enrolled in Advanced Placement classes has skyrocketed, nurturing the ambitions and college dreams of students and bringing respect and pride to a community that too often got only negative attention.

Stoner said the school offers 29 honors classes in 13 subjects, including European history and physics. “It’s not just calculus,” she said, “it’s a total package.”

Clearly, calculus is the program’s cornerstone, however. In 1987, a record 108 Garfield students took the first-year calculus exam, ranking Garfield seventh among public high schools in the nation. Calculus is the most widely taken exam subject at Garfield, with almost 200 of the 3,800 students enrolled in the subject this year.

Former Escalante student Sarah Jurado, a junior at Vassar College in New York, said calculus was so popular at Garfield that more than 40 students crammed into her class. “Mr. Escalante made math come so easy. You were just psyched to be there,” Jurado said.

Escalante’s strength was his mastery of math and his ability to entertain students while teaching them complex concepts, educators said. The Bolivian-born teacher often mixed Spanish and English and used props such as hats and baseballs to make students laugh and involve them in learning.

Like many recent Garfield graduates, Jurado said students have told her that the school’s calculus program is stumbling. “But Escalante was one of a kind, so I can understand that,” she said.

A number of students who had been taught by Escalante, Villavicencio and Jimenez avoided taking calculus at Garfield after those instructors left, other recent graduates said. Some decided to take calculus at community colleges instead.

“I think some of the students were suspicious of teachers they never had,” said Jose Resado, a senior taking calculus from Sargent this year, “but they never gave the new teachers a chance. The teachers are under a lot of pressure to be as good as Escalante. It just makes them nervous, and it’s not fair.”

Scores in Calculus The Advanced Placement calculus exam is offered on two levels, first year and second year. Here are the numbers of Garfield High School students who have taken the tests since 1979 and the numbers who passed.

FIRST NUMBER SECOND NUMBER YEAR YEAR PASSED YEAR PASSED 1992 107 47 24 14 1991 106 62 37 25 1990 85 64 24 13 1989 118 68 22 7 1988 90 42 29 13 1987 108 73 21 12 1986 68 59 25 19 1985 81 56 16 9 1984 55 51 13 12 1983 33 30 1 none 1982 12 12 none none 1981 15 14 none none 1980 10 8 1 1 1979 5 4 none none

Sources: Garfield High School, state Department of Education