The academic achievement in French of two cohorts of grade 9 students of a public school early immersion program in New Brunswick, which has total French-language instruction through grade 4 and includes all students in the program except transfers was compared to that of a group of native French-speaking students at a nearby French-language school. The students were tested on academic achievement in French language arts (including three reading comprehension tests, a writing skills measure, a general language arts test, and an overall French language proficiency test requiring reading and writing skills) and linguistic competence in French (including test of French morphology and vocabulary and three tests of listening comprehension). Results indicate that the program has met its goal of continued improvement in French skills during grades 7-9, with test score improvement on all of the relevant measures. The immersion students' level of performance on academic measures of French language arts ranged from grade 5 to grade 8 in comparison with the francophone students, and in linguistic competence the comparison was with grade 6 or 7. The students performed at one or two grade levels below immersion students in major Canadian cities. An increase in the complexity and variety of French language heard by the students is recommended to improve their skills. (MSE)