William Raspberry (1935-2012) was a great Washington Post columnist. He was a one of the first Black Americans to write for a major daily paper, and he was terrific at it. He won a Pulitzer and many accolades. His columns exuded commonsense, which all too often is in short supply in national debates. A professed liberal, he was anything but doctrinaire. He had a deep interest in real issues—poverty, crime, and equality of opportunity. And education, which he saw as being deeply intertwined with these matters.

This column was one of many he wrote on school choice. It is of particular interest to the federal Education Policy History site because it discusses a federal voucher experiment that few today know existed. His column describes the various special interests which stymied and killed the program.

Raspberry’s column also is a clarion reminder that school vouchers and choice has a complex history and should not be construed as a recent rightwing plot to defund the schools. For further information on the egalitarian origins of school vouchers, see Joseph P. Viteritti’s Choosing Equality: School Choice, the Constitution, and Civil Society (Brookings, 1999).

For further discussion of the Alum Rock experiment, see David W. Kirkpatrick’s Choice in Schooling: A Case for Tuition Vouchers (Loyola University Press, 1990).