Maybe when your childhood memories include waking up at midnight to a burning cross on your front lawn, you're not going to let a Teddy Kenedy or Eleanor Holmes Norton intimidate you. Just ask Virginia Walden-Ford.
As executive director of D.C. Parents for School Choice, the 52-year-old Mrs. Walden-Ford played a pivotal role in the landmark vouchers that just passed Congress. She did that with a public campaign that pushed one uncomfortable fact: How many of the Congressman and Senators fighting hardest agains school choice choose private schools for their own little darlings. But the willingness to spread a little discomfort shouldn't be all that surprising from a woman whose father was the first African-American administrator in the Little Rock school district, and who herself graduated from the same Central High that was home to the Little Rock Nine.
I was called 'nigger' most every day, and I begged my father--begged him---to let me go back to an all black school, ...
As executive director of D.C. Parents for School Choice, the 52-year-old Mrs. Walden-Ford played a pivotal role in the landmark vouchers that just passed Congress. She did that with a public campaign that pushed one uncomfortable fact: How many of the Congressman and Senators fighting hardest agains school choice choose private schools for their own little darlings. But the willingness to spread a little discomfort shouldn't be all that surprising from a woman whose father was the first African-American administrator in the Little Rock school district, and who herself graduated from the same Central High that was home to the Little Rock Nine.
I was called 'nigger' most every day, and I begged my father--begged him---to let me go back to an all black school, ...
Ms. Ford's own child was rescued from the D.C. schools by a generous neighbor.
We don't think that vouchers and charter shools have the power to remake places like D.C. But for a few kids who escape that terrible system, you go girl!!
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