One of the largest school districts in the United States hired at least one consulting teacher for each elementary school with a high proportion of low income, minority students. These consulting teachers assisted in the implementation of two academic programs--the All Schools Achieve Program (ASAP) and Systematic Strategy Instruction (SSI). Observation of the consulting teachers in four schools and interviews with teachers and instructional aides who worked with them informed researchers about factors affecting the programs' success, among them that SSI was more highly structured than ASAP, and that SSI consulting teachers received more extensive training. The SSI consulting teachers provided more specific direction and critical feedback to the teachers with whom they worked, and the SSI program proved more successful in encouraging teachers to adopt new strategies, though both programs obtained positive results. The programs seemed to help teachers focus on specific skill areas rather than on broad categorization of students. The findings suggested that although it is crucial to assign someone the responsibility for providing instructional leadership, that person need not be the building principal. It also appeared that additional information about recent research on effective teaching would have been particularly helpful to the consulting teachers. (PGD)