Participants selected for treatment in this study were Hispanic students selected
from the Algebra I classroom population in a central piedmont North Carolina high
school. Since Algebra I is a year-long course, the first semester is referred to as
Foundations of Algebra. It is this first semester Algebra I population that was the focus
for the research. The participating high school scheduled nine Algebra I classes during
the fall 2010 semester, enabling half of the Hispanic student population to receive the
proposed treatment and the other half to serve as the control group. The sample treatment
population were drawn from three Algebra I classes (n = 28) out of a total 238 students in
the Foundations of Algebra fall 2010 cohort, whose data were compared with the
Hispanic students in the six Algebra I control group classes (n = 29). Every Algebra I
classroom in the experimental group received the same bilingual slide treatment and
allowed students to use Spanish-language worksheets in collaborative, monolingual
working groups immediately following instructional delivery. The control group received
the same Microsoft PowerPoint slides without the Spanish subtitles and their work sheets
were in English only.