After a statewide vote ended bilingual education for one million Spanish-speaking K-12 California public school students two years ago, these Hispanic children are excelling at English and other subjects, improving their academic skills at "often striking rates," the New York Times reports.

The statewide test results show that second-graders classified as "limited in English" boosted their reading skills by 9 percentage points in two years. The same students boosted their mathematics averages by 14 points, the newspaper reports.

This news is significant because California is home to 10 percent of America's public school population. A large percentage of those students also are native Spanish speakers, and the move away from bilingual instruction likely will be studied by other states, the Times reports.

In fact, an early supporter of bilingual education now says he's changed his position, in part based on this academic performance. Ken Noonan, who 30 years ago founded the California Association of Bilingual Educators, told the newspaper his opposition to English-only instruction was based on concern for young students.

"I thought it (English-only) would hurt kids. The exact reverse occurred, totally unexpected by me," stated Noonan, who is now the school superintendent for Oceanside, Calif. "The kids began to learn -- not pick up, but learn -- formal English, oral and written, far more quickly than I ever thought they would.

"You read the research and they tell you it takes seven year. Here are kids, within nine months in the first year, and they literally learned to read."

The findings -- the first ones available since the English-only referendum became law -- are being disputed in some corners. Kenji Hakuta, a Stanford University education professor, says inaccurate conclusions are being drawn from the results. He argues that some school districts are concentrating on teaching students to pass the state exams and that some districts are seeing gains simply because they have tested so low in the past, the Times reports.

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