CLASS may soon be over for Jaime Escalante, the math teacher celebrated in the 1988 movie "Stand and Deliver."

According to news reports, Escalante, 79, is in poor health and unable to walk.

But after all these years, his accomplishments in Los Angeles, and his teaching philosophy, can still stand and deliver - if students are willing to do their part.

Escalante, a Bolivian, taught at schools such as LAUSD's Garfield High that were low performing, and expected to be so. For the education establishment, students with ancestry in Europe's Iberian Peninsula are not expected to perform well in math, let alone calculus. Jaime Escalante was having none of it.

He was not a believer in educational fads, such as the prevailing notion that teachers are mere "facilitators," and that students should be sheltered from difficult subjects, lest they not feel good about themselves. Escalante was old school all the way. He believed students could learn if they had the desire to do so, and if they were willing to work hard. He emphasized discipline, hard work and high expectations, which in his case were fulfilled.

He turned a generation of low-income students into high achievers in math in general and calculus in particular. Jay Mathews chronicled the achievements in "Escalante: The Best Teacher in America." The education establishment didn't know what to make of it, but the students did.

For example, Escalante instilled in student

Presidents feted Escalante and invited him to serve on education commissions. His story made the big screen with Edward James Olmos in the lead role. That came five years after "A Nation at Risk" charted educational decline in America. Little has changed since that time.

Presidents have attempted to show leadership through measures such as No Child Left Behind. President Obama is now trying to buy reform with a $4.3billion in federal money. California failed to make the cut for the first round, but stood to gain only $700 million, roughly 1 percent of the education budget.

The notion prevails that the problem is a lack of money, or that too many minority students drag down the scores. Jaime Escalante's students were virtually all low-income Hispanics, and he did not require a budget boost to promote achievement. For that, however, the students had to do their part, something often forgotten in the reform debate.

Generous budgets, solid curriculum, high standards, high expectations, and even dedicated teachers cannot by themselves promote achievement. The students themselves must respond with hard work and dedication of their own. If they fail to respond, they are as open to criticism as any politician, bureaucrat or teacher union boss.

The students of Jaime Escalante did respond with hard work and dedication, and to this day they thank him for it. The great teacher may be on his last legs, but according to what he recently told reporters, his ideas have not changed.

"Determination. Plus discipline. Plus hard work. That is the path."