JUST ANOTHER FREELOADIN' IMMIGRANT...

Players: Nina Shokraii Rees: From Iran, the 'Thomas Paine of School Choice' (Dana Milbank, September 3, 2003, The Washington Post)

Nina Shokraii Rees, the Bush administration's point woman in the effort to start a school voucher program in the District, had her first public school experience under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

In 1982, at age 14, she left Iran with her family because the revolution made life intolerable for them there. But when the family settled in Blacksburg, Va., and young Rees began attending public school, she reached an unsettling conclusion: Khomeini's schools were more rigorous than America's.

"In Blacksburg, it was very easy to get an A," she recalled in her fourth-floor office overlooking the Mall. "In Iran, I never got an A."

That conclusion launched Rees on a two-decade quest that has landed her, after two years in the Bush White House, as the deputy undersecretary of education in charge of "innovation and improvement" -- including the effort to expand the reach of school vouchers.

Her labors will be tested this week. On Thursday, the House is set to take up legislation by Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) to try a $15 million pilot voucher program in the District that would provide as much as $7,500 each for as many as 2,000 children in low-income families to attend private school. Senate Democrats blocked a similar plan last month, but the administration is hopeful the experimental plan can still win congressional approval. Though still in doubt, the prospects for a voucher plan in the District have never been better, aided by the support of such top city officials as Mayor Anthony A. Williams, School Board President Peggy Cooper Cafritz and D.C. Council education committee chairman Kevin P. Chavous. That support comes, in part, from Rees's legwork.

"She really does epitomize the compassionate conservative," said Chavous, who contrasts her with the "many Republicans [who] are amazingly cynical about the state of the city." D.C. leaders insisted that the voucher program be an addition to existing education funding for the District, and "Nina's been helpful in bringing other people along," Chavous said.

Compassion for is not necessarily mutually exclusive of cynicism about the state of the District. Posted by Orrin Judd at September 3, 2003 9:05 PM