King/Drew Medical Magnet High School proves it:

…King/Drew routinely sends more African Americans to UCLA than any other high school. This year, 20 King/Drew students were accepted at the Westwood campus, eight of them black, the rest Latino. Students were also accepted by Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Duke, Cornell and four other University of California campuses.

King/Drew was second only to Garfield High School in East Los Angeles for having the most Latino, Chicano and African American students accepted by UC Berkeley, according to Richard Black, assistant vice chancellor for admissions and enrollment.

“King/Drew is just this jewel,” said Phyllis Hart, a UCLA official who works to encourage qualified minorities, in the post-affirmative action era, to select UCLA over other schools. The school is, she said, “this wonderful place where you see all the things that people say you can’t get done, getting done.”

How does the school do it you ask? Here’s how:

King/Drew’s principal, J. Michelle Woods, said the secret to the school’s success was simple: a relatively small, close-knit group of students (King/Drew’s enrollment is a little less than 1,700, compared to 4,000 or 5,000 at many high schools); staff that didn’t let youths slip through the cracks; and high expectations.

At a time when the L.A. Board of Education is considering whether to require a college prep curriculum for all students, King/Drew is already there.

It demands that students take the rigorous courses meeting UC and Cal State system requirements. That means, among other things, four years of math, two years of science and two years of foreign language.

King/Drew actually goes further and requires a third year of foreign language and four years of science.

Tell that to those who think lowering expections is the key to success.

Link via A Constrained Vision who has more.