At Nile Garden Elementary School in Manteca one recent day, Victor Macias, 12, scribbled on a tiny piece of paper, rested his head in his hands and yawned.

Victor speaks almost no English, in contrast to many of the 27 children in teacher Randy Branscum's fifth-grade class who are native English speakers.

Special assistance for Victor comes in the form of 30 minutes of one-on-one instruction in Spanish with an aide twice a week, and through the child at the next desk. Though also a native Spanish speaker, she helps translate the action in class for Victor. Branscum has been trained to work with students learning English but has been teaching only a few years and doesn't speak Spanish.

Seventeen miles away in Tracy, Diego Diaz, 6, spends his school days in teacher Ana Terriquez's bilingual first-grade class at South/West Park Elementary School. Eighty percent of the class is conducted in Spanish. Diego spends just one-fifth of his day studying English.

The school days of Victor and Diego speak volumes about the state of education for children learning English in California since 1998 -- the year 61 percent of voters passed an initiative that promised to end bilingual education in public classrooms.

In the six years since it passed, Proposition 227 has yet to live up to many of its promises.

Bilingual classrooms still exist in California public schools. The one-year immersion programs and prompt transitions to mainstream classrooms the initiative promised children learning English have emerged as a hodgepodge of programs that can vary from classroom to classroom and from school to school.

Test scores have increased significantly for non-English-speaking children, but it's not clear how much of the increase is a result of the proposition.

And for some, the bitter feelings that Proposition 227 created have failed to cool.

In 1998, before the proposition took effect, San Joaquin County had 3,300 children enrolled in bilingual programs, about 14 percent of the children learning English.

Last year, five years after 227, the county still had 1,260 students in bilingual classes, about 5 percent of those learning English. Of the county's large districts, Tracy Unified School District has the highest percentage of its English learners still in a bilingual program.

That the programs exist is the result of an exception in the law allowing parents to request waivers. If enough parents in a particular grade level at a school sign waivers requesting bilingual instruction, a class can be formed.

The failure to phase out bilingual classes completely is not the only way the proposition hasn't met expectations.

Proposition 227 also required English-language immersion classes to be offered to first-year English-language students. Under the law, the classes are to be nearly all in English but with a curriculum and instruction specifically designed for
English-language learners. After a year, the children were then to transition into mainstream classrooms alongside children fluent in English.

But school districts have interpreted the immersion requirement in a variety of ways, and children often spend more than just one year in special classes or getting special services.

Sometimes children are in regular classrooms but spend a portion of their school day in smaller groups studying toward English fluency. In other instances, children learning English can be in classrooms with mostly English-speaking peers so long as they get one-on-one support in their native language a few times a week.

Victor is able to get support in his native language, Spanish, but not everyone can.

Children in more-remote language groups often don't get any assistance at all in their native tongues, because it is harder to find someone to work with them.

Jefferson Elementary School District in Tracy has a growing population of students who speak Punjabi, a language of India and Pakistan. The district tried to hire a Punjabi-speaking aide in the winter but got only one applicant who could speak the language. District staff decided to hire someone else they felt was more qualified, although that person does not speak Punjabi.

The state offers cross-cultural, language and academic development certification, known as CLAD, for teachers to work with children learning English. But not all students in the state or county are taught by teachers with the qualification.

Tracy Unified School District tries to keep children learning English with teachers who have CLAD certification, said Hal Kushins, the district's director of curriculum and special projects.

"But it doesn't always happen, because there's a shortage of CLAD teachers," he said.

Programs are inconsistent, because Proposition 227 isn't specific about exactly what districts should do, said Jan Mayer, manger of the state Department of Education's language policy and leadership office.

"The law is really written more like an essay, kind of a philosophy," Mayer said. "It doesn't have the structure in place to say, 'Aha, here is where I implement XYZ.' "

Mayer said that while the law allows for only one year of special instruction, it often takes several years for children to become fluent. Districts offer a variety of services to accommodate that, she said.

"The one-year time line is not based on reality," she said.

Raquel Moseley, principal of the Urbani Institute of Language Development in the Stockton Unified School District, agrees.

At Urbani, all children are English-language learners, courses are conducted entirely in English, and all the coursework and classroom instruction is designed specifically for students learning English. But children still aren't making strong enough gains to be competitive in standard classes after one year of immersion classes, Moseley said. Moseley said she wanted the students to advance four grade levels in one year. They've managed to advance 2 1/2, she said.

Moseley said that's good but not good enough.

"What does a child do?" she said. "They come in (to regular classrooms) already behind."

While interpretation of the proposition's requirements remains inconsistent, test scores have improved among non-English speakers since the measure passed.

Supporters of 227 say it shows the proposition worked. Some argue other factors have played a role.

Children are performing much better on a test called the California English Language Development Test, designed to gauge their English skills, since the test began in 2001.

Districts reclassify children as fluent based partly on this test. In the years since the proposition was passed, the number of children reclassified as fluent each year has increased from 6.7 percent to 7.7 percent.

Academic studies also show measured success since the initiative passed.

Christine Rossell, a political science professor at Boston University and a vocal opponent of bilingual education, began studying the effects of Proposition 227 in 1999.

She visited 170 classrooms at 28 elementary and middle schools around California.

She found that students in immersion programs were better off than those in bilingual classes. But she found they weren't as well off as expected.

That's because bilingual education did work, just not as well as English-only classrooms, she said.

"This notion (children) weren't learning English is false, and most of the campaign rhetoric was false," Rossell said, referring to 1998's campaign.

"I cringe at half the stuff that was said. It's hogwash."

Another study, by the American Institutes for Research, a Washington-based research group, seems to confirm Rossell's findings. The study found that, while test scores improved for students in English-immersion classrooms, they also improved at schools where bilingual instruction continued to be offered and at schools that never had bilingual instruction.

That indicates other factors - such as a push toward student testing and accountability, which began about the same time as the law -- also could be responsible, said Tom Parrish, managing research scientist at AIR.

"The real big gorilla on the block has been the accountability movement," Parrish said.

Ron Unz, the Silicon Valley millionaire who spearheaded the Yes on 227 campaign, doesn't buy AIR's findings.

Unz contends the organization's report is inaccurate and says his own analysis of test information from the state proves English-immersion programs work much better than bilingual programs.

Although AIR is well-regarded among researchers, including Rossell, Unz described the group as, "a laughable organization."

"Maybe if the government gives you a couple of million (dollars), you can sit around and write a 100-page report on how zero to 100 is not zero to 100," Unz said.

Unz said high-profile supporters of bilingual education have come around to his point of view, and he said that proves he is right.

Unz pointed to Ken Noonan, co-founder of the California Association of Bilingual Educators, who now supports the proposition.

"People don't like to admit that they were wrong," Unz said.

Unz's statement betrays another truth about Proposition 227 that doesn't show up in figures or test scores.

The initiative was a highly emotionally charged issue in 1998 and remains so today.

"In a way, it is putting down Latino culture," said Edith Diaz, Diego's mother. Diaz's other child, Abraim, 10, also went through a bilingual program in the Tracy Unified School District.

Diaz said she put her children in the bilingual program because she felt being bilingual would be an advantage to them when they grew up. She said she thinks some people who pushed the initiative don't think Spanish is important.

"I don't see why people would say it would set them back to learn Spanish," she said. "The more languages you speak, the better."

Some proponents of bilingual education have decided to move past the conflict of 227 and attack other issues they think prevent children learning English from succeeding.

A number of researchers, including those who remain in favor of bilingual education, say what's most important is that programs for English learners become more consistent and higher quality and that state officials make educating English learners a priority.

"Bilingual vs. English-only is kind of a political wedge. It serves to polarize," said Kenji Hakuta, dean of the school of social sciences, humanities and arts at the University of California, Merced, and a pro-bilingual researcher.

Hakuta is one of a number of expert witnesses to testify in an ongoing class-action lawsuit, Williams v. State of California.

It argues that the state has done an inadequate job of providing for English learners. Such students are far more likely than their English-speaking peers to be in poor schools without proper supplies and with teachers who don't have teaching credentials.

"It distracts attention from being placed on important things," Hakuta said, "like the quality of the facilities, the quality of the textbooks and the quality of the teacher."