What’s it like to have your life story told on the big screen?

The new movie Miss Virginia is based on the unlikely story of Virginia Walden Ford, who, as a single mother in Washington, D.C., in the early 2000s, fought to create a federally-funded private school voucher program that would allow poor kids—including her son—to escape failing public schools. Against long odds and institutional hostility, she succeeded and is played with fiery passion by Orange Is the New Black‘s Uzo Aduba. Matthew Modine, known for roles in Full Metal Jacket, Weeds, and Stranger Things, co-stars as a sympathetic congressman who helps win congressional authorization for the program. READ MORE

Matthew Modine’s career has spanned more than 30 years, but it was a piece of advice he received from his father as a young man that has influenced his life, his activism and his new role in the upcoming film Miss Virginia.

“I didn’t know where to begin, it was so much mess, it was like an inch deep of horror,” Modine toldNewsweek Conversations, describing an overflown toilet he was tasked to clean at one of his father’s movie theaters. “My dad came to me, put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘I know, it’s a mess. You can get angry about it, you can find the person responsible, but it’s not going to clean it up.’ It was an important lesson because when there’s a problem in the world, you can try to find the people that are responsible, you can get angry, but you have to clean it up.”

It was that advice that influenced Modine’s performance in the new film Miss Virginia, directed by R.J. Daniel Hanna and starring Uzo Aduba as Virginia Walden Ford, a true story about a single mother raising her son in the low-income neighborhoods of Washington, D.C. Ford successfully lobbied Congress to support the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, giving her son and thousands of other children in D.C. the opportunity to attend private schools. Modine plays Congressman Cliff Williams, a character created for the film, who Miss Virginia works with to garner support for the program. READ MORE

Orange is the New Black, the acclaimed Netflix series that ended this summer after seven seasons, didn’t have one star. It had many. Still, among such a stellar cast, Uzo Aduba, who played Suzanne Warren, stood out. Perhaps it’s because she was in every season of the show, while many other characters came and went. Perhaps it’s because she was so unpredictable – her character’s nickname was “Crazy Eyes,” after all. Perhaps it’s because her backstory was particularly tragic, even among so many tragic backstories. In the final season, when she finally starts to realize that she’s mentally ill, Suzanne asks her mother if she “deserves” to be in prison. Her mother says no.

She was also perhaps the only truly sympathetic character on the show. Suzanne never meant to harm anyone, even under the most trying circumstances, and she always lifted her fellow inmates up. In turn, the other prisoners looked out for her. She was never anyone’s target.

Aduba proved to be a unique talent in every scene she performed, an actor whose dimensions were revealed slowly over the course of those seven years. She showed depth, heart, whimsy and compassion. She’s also an extraordinary singer. And yet, while Orange is the New Blackcertainly elevated Aduba’s profile, she has until now had only supporting roles. READ MORE

A woman scrubs the bathroom floor on her hands and knees, hair pulled back in a scarf. Another woman dressed in a business suit applies lipstick at the mirror. Both are mothers. Both are black. One is a congresswoman. The other cleans the toilets and floors in the congresswoman’s office. And soon after their meeting in the bathroom, they become fierce opponents over the right for all students, including poor ones in Washington DC, to attend a quality school.

This is a scene early in the film Miss Virginia, a true-story drama about mom-turned- education-activist Virginia Walden (Ford), who launches the grass-roots organization D.C. Parents for School Choice in 1998. The group’s goal was the establishment of a scholarship program so that low-income children could escape their local public schools and gain access to private schools. READ MORE

Parents are the first and primary advocates for their kids, and choosing a school is one of the most important decisions parents make for their children.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of folks out there who believe they know best when it comes to making that decision. Worse, they believe some choices should only be available to those who can afford to pay or move to a certain part of town.

If you don’t have time to read this whole piece, let me get the good stuff out of the way upfront: All children deserve to find the schooling option that works best for them. Doesn’t matter where they live. Doesn’t matter how much money their family makes. Everyone should have a choice.

Now, there’s a misconception out there that school-choice advocates are against public schools–or that they only support charter schools or private schools or some other type of schooling. READ MORE

Virginia Walden Ford never expected her life to become a movie. All she wanted was to send her boy to a better school. “When I started this journey, it was to fight for my son,” she says. “Along the way it became a fight for all children.”

Ford struggled to help her William after she discovered he was skipping class at his Washington, D.C., high school. He got suspended twice, at a time when drug dealers were loitering on corners in his neighborhood, looking for recruits. If William was going to succeed, or even survive, his mother would have to find a school that inspired him to learn.

So in 1998, Ford banded together with other parents to seek more educational opportunity. They hoped for scholarships their children could use to escape their dysfunctional public schools. “We were a group of low-income and working-class parents,” she explains, possessing one tool: “Our voices.” READ MORE

My expectations for movies with a message—especially a message of which I approve—are low. Message flicks of any bent too often succumb to tedious repetition of simplistic morals, and libertarian types are not heavily represented among the best filmmakers. This is why I was surprised by the new movie Miss Virginia, which I just saw at a preview screening. It tells the story of Virginia Walden Ford—whom, full disclosure, I know—and her crusade to create the District of Columbia Opportunity Scholarship Program, better known, simply, as the DC voucher program. The movie does not preach, it lets Walden Ford’s real-life story sear in its moral: parents need choice, and children cannot wait.

Miss Virginia takes place in early 2000s Washington, especially the long-depressed southeast section, and depicts the struggles of Walden Ford and other families. In neighborhoods beset by poverty, crime, and drug addiction, the public schools are rendered inhospitable to learning, and sometimes outright dangerous. When things turn especially threatening for her son, Walden Ford toils desperately to get him into a private school and keep him there. But though it costs much less than the public schools spend per pupil, she fails. And the battle for choice begins. READ MORE

In the early 2000s, Virginia Walden Ford, a single mother in D.C.’s low-income neighborhoods, realized the importance of private school choice. Her youngest son, William, was falling in with the wrong crowd and struggling in the local public school.

“William began skipping school and getting into all kinds of trouble in school with teachers and administration. He truly believed that if he acted ‘bad,’ he would be safe,” she recalls.

All this changed, however, when a neighbor provided a private school scholarship for William. READ MORE

When Virginia Walden Ford crossed the threshold of her new high school in Little Rock, Arkansas, as one of the second wave of black students to integrate the school, little did she know these were her first steps in a lifetime journey to champion educational opportunity for all children.

Ford would go on to help nearly 9,000 children attend their school of choice in Washington, D.C., and her story would be featured in the forthcoming movie “Miss Virginia.”

During the 1990s, Ford was a single mom of three children in Washington, D.C. She was shocked at the condition of the local public schools, where eighth-graders were performing three grade levels below their peers across the nation in mathematics, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. READ MORE

LITTLE ROCK (KATV) — Virginia Walden Ford, a Little Rock resident who fights to create new educational opportunities for children and families, is being featured in “Miss Virginia” said a press release from Purdue Marion & Associates.

“Miss Virginia” is a true story of a struggling inner-city mother who sacrifices everything to give her son and thousands like him a good education, says the film’s website.

Ford, instrumental in bringing Arkansas Connections Academy, a free online school for students in K-12 that provides accessible education to any student in Arkansas, also serves on the board for the academy. READ MORE