A study evaluated a teacher development model that provides teachers with peer support and techniques for fostering active reading strategies in inner-city reading disabled adolescents using Collaborative Strategy Instruction. Subjects were 13 pairs of teachers in 9 middle, junior high, or senior high schools who taught reading comprehension to small pull-out groups of 3 to 10 students for 2 half-hour sessions per week for at least 4 months. Only teachers in the experimental group received training and participated in collaborative strategy instruction sessions with their students. Instructional sessions were videotaped before and after intervention, students were administered different versions of a standardized test as pre- and posttest, and teachers completed questionnaires. Results indicated that: (1) high school classes showed more gains than middle school for both the experimental and control groups; (2) the amount of training time was more critical than the amount of time the teachers spent working with students; (3) the goal of helping teachers and students work collaboratively during reading instruction was the focus of training and was reflected in teacher and student performance; (4) standardized test results were mixed; and (5) experimental teachers provided more reflective, comprehensive, and detailed responses on the questionnaire than controls. Findings suggest that teachers were able to help their students to productively make use of their basic problem solving and social capabilities by collaboratively generating, sharing, and evaluating strategies that allow them to understand text. (One table of data is included.) (RS)