The Early Childhood Initiative (ECI), supported by the Fund for New York City Public Education, operates in four New York City schools, reinventing the early childhood classroom by combining special education and general education team teaching and a heterogeneous mix of students with developmentally appropriate instruction, authentic assessment, and parent partnerships. Ongoing staff development efforts help refine the model. The model departs in a fundamental way from inclusion programs that focus on one or two special education students in a general education classroom. It actually reduces general education class size to allow for full integration of special and general education students. A total of 396 students were served in ECI classrooms in the 4 schools. Of these, 111 (28%) were labeled as having special educational needs. During the 1994-95 school year, 8 students were decertified, including 3 of the 12 special-needs students in the 2 ECI prekindergarten classrooms. This report presents the stories of 7 general education and 8 special education ECI students with interpretations of their progress by 11 experts in early childhood education. Three appendixes describe the ECI population and evaluation sample, list the members of the study validation panel, and describe the evaluation method. These narratives evaluate the program by showing how the children are doing. The expert panel expressed continuing concerns about only 1 of the 15 students profiled. (SLD)