Editing Stand and Deliver (section)

== Historical accuracy ==
The film accurately portrays that students had to retake the AP exam, and that all who retook it passed.{{citation needed|date=April 2022}}

The movie gives the impression that the incident occurred in the second year Escalante was teaching, after students from his first year took a summer session for the calculus prerequisites. In fact, Escalante first began teaching at Garfield High School in 1974 and taught his first Advanced Placement Calculus course in 1978 with a group of 14 students, and it was in 1982 that the exam incident occurred. In the first year (1978), only five students remained in the course at the end of the year, only two of whom passed the AP Calculus exam.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Woo |first=Elaine |date=2010-03-31 |title=Jaime Escalante dies at 79; math teacher who challenged East L.A. students to 'Stand and Deliver' |work=Los Angeles Times |url=https://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-xpm-2010-mar-31-la-me-jaime-escalante31-2010mar31-story.html |access-date=2012-01-16 |archive-date=2019-08-22 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190822180935/https://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-xpm-2010-mar-31-la-me-jaime-escalante31-2010mar31-story.html |url-status=live }}</ref> Writing in ''[[Reason (magazine)|Reason]]'', Jerry Jesness stated, "Unlike the students in the movie, the real Garfield students required years of solid preparation before they could take calculus. So Escalante established a program at [[East Los Angeles College]] where students could take those classes in intensive seven-week summer sessions. Escalante and [principal Henry] Gradillas were also instrumental in getting the feeder schools to offer algebra in the eighth and ninth grades."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Jesness |first=Jerry |date=July 2002 |title=Stand and Deliver Revisited |work=Reason |url=https://reason.com/archives/2002/07/01/stand-and-deliver-revisited/ |access-date=2015-11-12 |archive-date=2015-09-05 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150905220558/http://reason.com/archives/2002/07/01/stand-and-deliver-revisited |url-status=live }}</ref> In 1987, 27 percent of all Mexican Americans who scored three or higher on the AP Calculus exam were students at Garfield High.<ref name="retest">{{Cite news |last=Mathews |first=Jay |author-link=Jay Mathews |date=2009-09-14 |title=Retest D.C. Classes That Had Dubious Exam Results in '08 |newspaper=The Washington Post |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/13/AR2009091302414.html?hpid=sec-education |access-date=2012-01-16}}</ref>

Escalante himself described the film as "90 percent truth, 10 percent drama". He said that several points were left out of the film. He pointed out that no student who did not know multiplication tables or fractions was ever taught calculus in a single year. Also, he suffered [[cholecystitis|inflammation of the gall bladder]], not a heart attack.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2010-03-31 |title=Jaime Escalante dies at 79; math teacher who challenged East L.A. students to 'Stand and Deliver' |url=https://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-xpm-2010-mar-31-la-me-jaime-escalante31-2010mar31-story.html |access-date=2022-12-07 |website=Los Angeles Times |language=en-US |archive-date=2022-12-07 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221207191242/https://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-xpm-2010-mar-31-la-me-jaime-escalante31-2010mar31-story.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

Ten of the 1982 students signed waivers to allow the [[College Board]] to show their exams to [[Jay Mathews]], the author of ''Escalante: The Best Teacher in America''. Mathews found that nine of them had made "identical silly mistakes" on free response question six. Mathews heard from two of the students that during the exam, a piece of paper had been passed around with that flawed solution.<ref name="retest" /> Twelve students, including the nine with the identical mistakes, retook the exam, and most of them received the top scores of four and five. Mathews concluded that nine of the students did cheat, but they knew the material and did not need to.<ref name="retest" />

Mathews wrote in the ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'' that the Ana Delgado character "was the only teenage character in the film based on a real person"<ref>{{Cite news |last=Mathews |first=Jay |author-link=Jay Mathews |date=2010-04-04 |title=Lessons For a Lifetime |work=Los Angeles Times |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-apr-04-la-oe-mathews4-2010apr04-story.html |access-date=2015-11-12 |archive-date=2020-10-20 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201020124149/https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-apr-04-la-oe-mathews4-2010apr04-story.html |url-status=live }}</ref> and that her name had been changed.