The Edgewood Independent School District (San Antonio, Texas), using a mini-system of one high school, one middle school, and four elementary schools, conducted an Experimental Schools Program from 1972-1977 to test a local decision making, long-term innovative program to effect substantial changes in the affective and cognitive characteristics of a largely Mexican American student body. The program utilized intervention components of staff development, curriculum development, internal evaluation, family services, cultural advocacy, and services to the handicapped to operationalize its instructional strategies. Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses were performed on the constructs of educational change, educational compatibility, social context, and student impacts. Evaluation data indicated: (1) about the same range of characteristics (student attitudes, self-concept, motivation) in program students as those tested elsewhere by the same instruments; (2) no consistent longitudinal improvement of treatment students' standardized test scores over those of the comparison group nor in relationship to national norms; (3) little student, faculty, administration or community support for teaching in Spanish and teaching about Mexican American culture; and (4) high school completion classes for adults, college courses facilitated, and the alternative high school showed high acceptance. An important implication was the necessity of carefully integrating any project into the existing system. (Author/CM)