This paper reports on a 3-year study of a half-day urban magnet high school founded upon a desire to provide rigorous science, math, and technology experiences to students who would not otherwise have access to such educational opportunities. Using the theoretical lens of how a model of an educated person gets culturally produced within the school setting, I attended to: (1) the institutional construction of preferred student identity, (2) ways in which students in the school both took up and transformed this identity, and (3) how these student initiatives played a role in gradual institutional shifts in student expectations. Four constructs--learning, achievement, resistance, and success--were found to play significant roles in how the qualities of an educated person were negotiated through practice in attempts to create a culture of academic success in science and mathematics. These findings have implications for teaching and learning in other urban school settings.