Stand and Deliver (1987) is a movie about mathematics—yes, mathematics. It also features a most unusual movie hero: an educator. Yet this independently produced 1987 drama is as riveting and satisfying as the most cleverly plotted, edge-of-your-seat thriller. It is the fact-based story of Jaime Escalante, a math teacher in an East Los Angeles barrio high school, brought brilliantly to life by Hispanic actor Edward James Olmos in an Oscar-nominated performance. Engaging, affecting, and inspirational, the film gave Escalante's philosophy and methods wide popular exposure, exercising a positive influence on American attitudes to education culture among those who saw it.

Jaime Escalante transformed a classroom of potential dropouts into calculus wizards, and Stand and Deliver shows how he did it. In so doing, the film's title takes on extra resonance. The phrase "stand and deliver" (originally a military term) has come to define how a...