Virgina Walden Ford

A native of Little Rock, Arkansas, Virginia Walden-Ford was raised by William Harry Fowler and Marion Virginia Fowler Armstrong, both public school educators. Her father was a principal and the first black assistant superintendent of the Little Rock school district. Her mother was one of the first black teachers to work at an all-white elementary school there. Walden-Ford and her twin sister were among a group of about 130 black students who were handpicked to desegregate the Little Rock’s high schools in the mid-1960s.

Ford founded DC Parents for School Choice (1998 – 2011) as a clearinghouse organization for parents in Washington, D.C. Its mission was to organize and educate parents in order to empower them to make the appropriate educational decisions for their children. If parents understand school choice, they can advocate for badly needed educational reform.

Called to action in January of 2003 to help lead the effort to get School Choice legislation passed in the District, Virginia organized parents for a successful grassroots effort. DC Parents for School Choice joined a coalition of organizations who had worked tirelessly to make sure that the children of the District and their families would be the beneficiaries of the opportunity to choose schools that best served their children’s educational needs with the passage of the DC School Choice Incentive Act.

Virginia's community involvement began as a result of her own personal experiences. As a single parent, she raised three children in Washington, D.C. Two of her children finished high schools in the District successfully, but with her third child she was faced with deteriorating public schools and violent times. After obtaining a private scholarship for her son to attend Archbishop Carroll HS, she became an outspoken advocate for school choice. She believes passionately that all children should have the chance to obtain a quality education and that parents should be able to choose and send their children to the schools that best meet their needs.

Virginia worked as a volunteer with the Center for Education Reform in their parent outreach campaign in l997and worked with the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise as Parent Outreach Coordinator and organized parents to support school choice and the D.C. Scholarship Act in 1998 Virginia is a founding member of The Black Alliance for Educational Options, Inc. She also served on the DC Advisory Committee of the US Civil Rights Commission, The Education Breakthrough Network and the Booker T. Washington Public Charter School in Washington, DC. She currently serves on the Boards of The Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation and the Arkansas Connection Academy.

Virginia is Executive Director of the Arkansas Information Network, working to make more educational choices available to Arkansas parents by providing them with information about traditional, public charter, private and parochial schools. Among her honors Virginia was the recipient of the Heritage Foundation's prestigious 2004 Salvatori Prize for American Citizenship, the Black Alliance for Educational Options’ (BAEO) 2004 Vision Award and the 2005 Leonard F. DeFiore Parental Choice Advocate Award from the National Catholic Education Association (NCEA) and the 2008 John T. Walton Champions for School Choice Award from the Alliance for School Choice.

She is the author of Voices, Choices, and Second Chances: How to Win the Battle to Bring Opportunity Scholarships to Your State. Based on the dramatic story and ultimately successful campaign of D.C. Parents for School Choice, this book teaches parents how to fight to free children and their families from failing schools.