Few states have experienced as dramatic a shift in demographics over the last 20 years as North Carolina. Between 2000 and 2010, North Carolina's Hispanic population increased by 111 percent, according to U.S. Census data.

And with that influx of Hispanic families (many of them immigrants from Mexico) came rising numbers of students in North Carolina's public schools who were not native English speakers. The English-language learner population statewide in the 2011-12 school year was roughly 7 percent of the K-12 enrollment, or just under 100,000 students, according to federal data. And the vast majority of those children were native Spanish speakers.

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