[Pennsylvania Democratic State Senator Anthony] Williams, who is black, has taken some heat for his pro-voucher stance from local civil rights groups. “The NAACP nationally is opposed to this and locally is opposed to this, and they call me all sorts of funny names,” he tells us. “But the truth is that a lot of the people in the NAACP don’t acknowledge that they send their own kids to private schools. They’ve left. They’ve moved away.”

Several local labor groups in Philadelphia have also broken with the teachers union and endorsed vouchers. “We believe that children from all economic backgrounds deserve a chance for a bright future,” said John Dougherty of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 98. “School choice programs will give them that chance.”

Opponents turned vouchers into a devil word a decade ago, and no doubt they’ll try to do it again. But another decade of public schools failure has made more Americans open to change. The best solution would be for education money to follow every child to whatever school, home school or Internet classroom he wants to attend. But the Pennsylvania and D.C. proposals would liberate kids in the worst schools, and that’s a start.

From today’s Wall Street Journal.