High expectations for student success are crucial. Unfortunately, in today's schools it works something like this: successful students generate high expectations. Low-performing students generate low expectations and are channeled into remedial or vocational classes. This winnowing process does not benefit the students it means to assist, and the results are dire, especially for low-income and minority students. According to the Education Trust, "by age 17, only about 1 in 17 students can read and gain information from specialized text—something like the science section in your local newspaper" (U.S. Department of Education, 1999).

The expectation of all Early College of Alaska students will be that they can master college-prep academic coursework.

Patte Barth and Kati Haycock, research scholars at the Education Trust, reveal that "Teachers often hesitate to place low-achieving students into tough courses for fear it will set them up for failure. Yet we're learning that low-achieving students are typically no more likely to fail more difficult classes than they are in the watered-down ones where we often warehouse them. Indeed, when bottom-quartile students are placed in a low-level English course, nearly half—47 percent—fail. Put the same students in a college-prep English course and failure rates decline by about half" (A New Core Curriculum, 2003).