Interviewed by National Public Radio, Jaime Escalante said his only problem with the 1988 movie that documented his heroic work as an educator was that it made learning complex math appear to be something students could do quickly and with little effort.

Otherwise, Escalante, who died last week at 79, said the film, “Stand and Deliver,” was 90 percent accurate.

An immigrant from Bolivia, Escalante learned English in night school before he transformed Garfield High School in Los Angeles by motivating struggling students to excel in math and science. It took years and he was laughed at and chided by fellow faculty members who had low expectations and set low standards for the school’s mostly poor, mostly minority students, but Garfield eventually had more advanced-placement calculus students than all but four other public high schools in the country.

Edward James Olmos, who played Escalante in the movie, said Escalante “shattered forever” the notion that disadvantaged youths shouldn’t be challenged.

Really?

Our perception is that many engaged in public education still find themselves primarily engaged in making excuses and filling out forms to keep state and federal overseers off their backs. Their focus, quite simply, is not on student achievement, which is the only place it should be.

Last week also brought news that key local leaders, including Superintendent Dr. James Price, will be retiring from the Vicksburg Warren School District. He has been an effective manager for the 9,000-student district and, as his colleagues pointed out, is due great credit especially in the financial arena. The school budget here is almost twice the city and county budgets combined.

Price has also been a leader in trying to rally neighborhood identity with and support for schools at the elementary level by creating smaller community schools. And he’s to be commended for attempting a real innovation — adding remedial days to school calendars after each nine-week period — even though the idea failed largely due to low parental support.

Going forward, school trustees face the challenge of bringing in a new leader.

The Associated Press interviewed Elsa Bolado, one of Escalante’s pupils who is now 45 and a teacher, about his influence. She remembered the long hours, the hard work and said, “Teaching is an art form. There’s a lot of practicioners and very few artists. He was a master artist.”

The world’s supply of “master artists” in education is finite, for sure, but trustees should have Escalante’s ethic on their minds while interviewing any and all candidates for top education jobs here.

The district will progress under someone who puts student achievement first, who understands learning isn’t quick or easy, who is willing to hang in over the long haul against detractors, including parents, who believe in low standards. Such a person will motivate faculty, staff and, most importantly, students.

Some will say that can’t be achieved here. No one believed it could happen at Garfield High, either. But it did.