Ten of the students agreed to sign waivers so that the College Board could show Jay Mathews, author of Escalante: The Best Teacher in America, their exam papers. Mathews found that nine of the 10 had made "identical silly mistakes" on free-response question Number 6. Mathews heard two of the students passed around a piece of paper with that flawed solution during the exam. 12 students (including the 9 with the identical mistakes) retook the exam, most of them got 4s and 5s on the 5 point exam. In 1987, 27 percent of all Mexican Americans who scored 3 or higher on the calculus AP exam were students at Garfield High.
Escalante actually first began teaching at Garfield High School in 1974 and taught his first AP Calculus course in 1978 with a group of 14 students. Only five students remained in the course at the end of the year and of the five, only two passed the AP Calculus exam.