Epstein, Noel (1938-)

Kalman Noel Epstein was an editor of the Washington Post for more than 30 years and, earlier, of the Wall Street Journal. He made an important contribution to the debate over bilingual education with his 1977 book, Language, Ethnicity, and the Schools: Policy Alternatives for Bilingual-Bicultural Education. Epstein's book highlighted the issues that school board members and some unions found controversial in the Bilingual Education Act, Title VII, of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). He was especially critical of government funding of bilingual bicultural maintenance programs in public schools. A maintenance bilingual program was one of the options in the Bilingual Education Act that had been reauthorized in 1974. Other options local districts could choose, and which most did, were transitional bilingual programs in which the native language was used as a bridge to learning English as a second language (ESL) as soon as possible.

Epstein coined the term affirmative ethnicity, defined as a policy of government-financed support and promotion of ethnic identities by protecting existing languages and cultural communities in the schools. He questioned the bicultural component of the maintenance bilingual programs, which had as their goals students learning English while maintaining their native languages and affirming their cultures—that is, becoming bilingual and bicultural. Epstein did not object to the right of groups to maintain their languages and cultures, but he posed the question as to whether it was the role of the federal government to finance students' attachments to their ethnic languages and cultures. He noted that historically, this was the role of families, religious groups, ethnic organizations, and private schools. Critics charged that, like other nativists, Epstein ignored the fact that adherents of maintenance bilingual education are supporters of the public schools. As taxpayers, they have the right to advocate for instructional programs of their choice for their children.

Epstein is credited with helping shape the U.S. policy on bilingual education. He wrote in Language, Ethnicity, and the Schools that two lobbying groups had expressed concerns about federally sponsored biculturalism. The National Association of School Boards at that time suggested that the legislation, Title VII of the ESEA, could be read as promoting a divisive, Canadian-style biculturalism. The United Auto Workers union was also concerned that the bicultural components of the Bilingual Education Act might lead to separation rather than integration in the schools. Epstein's 1977 book was the first to provide a broad canvas for discussing the political context for bilingual, bicultural education. He suggested that the policy had become perhaps the largest federally funded policy in the United States of an “ethnic, political wave that was sweeping the globe” (p. 4). He wrote that he had no question that bilingual-bicultural policy was largely the result of the “quest of discrim-inated-against minority groups, and particularly Hispanic Americans, for more power, prestige, and jobs” (p. 4).

Epstein's 2004 book, Who's in Charge Here? The Tangled Web of School Governance and Policy, which he edited, brings together varied perspectives on another debate: the extent of the role of the federal government in schooling. Scholars present arguments and analyses in support of either more centralization or more local decision making as a better direction for school improvement. In his introduction, Epstein noted that there were already two major competing lines of authority; local schools and districts were originally “protected” from politics by being responsible not to the mayor or governor, but to state boards of education. However, large city school systems (Chicago, New York, Boston, Philadelphia) have increasingly been taken over by mayors, to be accountable to their electorate and the federal government in meeting national standards of annual achievement testing under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

...