Official Website of Andrew Klavan —

Official Website of Andrew Klavan —
"...At the peak of Escalante’s work at Garfield, his math enrichment program involved over 400 students and produced more kids who passed Advanced Placement calculus than wealthy Beverly Hills High. He achieved this truly mind-boggling feat despite constant opposition from guess which formidable source. If you guessed evil right-wing racists, congratulations, you have the chief qualification to become a New York Times columnist: a distorted sense of reality. Because the true answer of course is: that untouchable mainstay of the Democratic Party, the teachers union.

The union opposed Escalante’s classes at the beginning when they were smaller than union rules allowed and at their peak when they became larger. There were complaints he came to work too early and left too late, and gripes about his high standards and tough discipline. “If you looked into what is going on in this school in the name of the union,” Escalante wrote the union president in 1990, “I think… you would be appalled.”