. Our
letter of invitation was sent to the principals of these schools to ascertain their own
and their faculty’s interest in and commitment to a 5-year professional development
intervention project. Of the 33 schools, 17 volunteered to participate. Shortly after
the project commenced, two schools withdrew, for a total of 15 schools participating
in the larger project.
For our school-wide initiative, we invited every third- through fifth-grade teacher
in each of the 15 participating schools. Table 1 presents the demographic makeup of
the third- through fifth-grade students in these 15 schools. The students were
predominantly Hispanic and Black (including many Haitian) from low SES
backgrounds. Close to 40% of the students were currently in ESOL programs or had
exited from ESOL programs within the previous 2 years.
Table 2 presents the demographic makeup of the third- through fifth-grade
teachers in the 15 participating schools. The majority of the teachers identified
themselves as being from racial or ethnic nonmainstream backgrounds, which