VOUCHERS IN D.C.

Several months ago, THE SCRAPBOOK reported on a charity in the nation’s capital called the Washington Scholarship Fund, which currently grants 450 private-school scholarships (chosen by lottery) to D.C. children who would otherwise remain victims of what may be the country’s worst public-school system.

Exactly how bad are things? Thanks to a donation to the fund by Ted Forstmann and John Walton of $ 2 million a year, WSF will be able to award 1, 000 scholarships next year. They announced this three months ago and have already received 5,500 applications — 13 percent of all eligible schoolchildren in Washington, D.C. And the deadline for filing the applications is still three weeks away.