The Significant Bilingual Instructional Features (SBIF) study identified, described, and verified features of bilingual instruction of a wide variety of limited English proficient (LEP) students. This report describes a two-year substudy tracing the experience of 85 LEP students from five nationally distributed sites representing varied ethnolinguistic groups (Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Chinese, and Navajo). The study examined two broad aspects of the students' experience: (1) the classroom context and instructional processes as they related to student performance, and (2) variation in the students' engagement and/or participation with the characteristics of the classrooms to which they were assigned. Data are analyzed here for the overall group and for each site, and results are compared for four student subgroups divided according to the amount of native language use in basic skills instruction. (MSE)