In the early 1980s, Jaime Escalante becomes a mathematics teacher at James A. Garfield High School in East Los Angeles.

There is no air conditioning, but Escalante is able to teach the class, giving them oranges and telling them to focus so they can get good jobs and take vacations.

In the fall, he gives the students contracts to be signed by the parents; they must come in on Saturdays, show up an hour early to school, and stay until 5pm in order to prepare for the AP Calculus exam.

Fabiola reassures him stating that his students appreciate his efforts regardless; this is confirmed when some of them show up at his house with a surprise: they have fixed up his car as a way to thank him.

The film ends with captions indicating that in the summer of 1982 Escalante's entire class was able to pass AP Calculus and in subsequent years, his program became even more successful.

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.

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.

"[5] In 1987, 27 percent of all Mexican Americans who scored three or higher on the AP Calculus exam were students at Garfield High.

[7] 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.

The website's consensus reads, "Stand and Deliver pulls off the unlikely feat of making math class the stuff of underdog drama – and pays rousing tribute to a real-life inspirational figure in the bargain.

[10] In December 2011, Stand and Deliver was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

[16][17] In 2016, the United States Postal Service issued a 1st Class Forever "Jaime Escalante" stamp to honor "the East Los Angeles teacher whose inspirational methods led supposedly 'unteachable' high school students to master calculus.