When all the shouting - and litigation - is done, we assume that the D.C. voucher program will go forward. If it does, much of the credit belongs to Virginia Walden-Ford, profiled recently by William McGurn in the Wall Street Journal. Walden-Ford, who used private vouchers to get her own son out of a violence-ridden D.C. public school and onto a successful course--now into the Marines, and recently off to serve in Iraq - heads D.C. Parents for School Choice. The group raised the stakes during the months-long D.C. voucher debate by running tough ads that likened anti-voucher Senators to segregationist Bull Conner - in many cases, in the Senators' home states. "We decided we had to do something to make them take us seriously," she says. As McGurn notes, they now certainly do. And Ms. Walden-Ford gets a lot of the credit.
"Yes, Virginia, there is a voucher," by William McGurn, Wall Street Journal, February 2, 2004, (subscription required)