Is the popularity of market-based educational reform among urban residents of color the epitaph of a progressive educational vision, or does it bespeak a struggle to reincarnate that vision within a postwelfare state? This article examines ethnographic work with African American voucher families in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Discursive overlaps and tensions among three sets of stakeholders--African American voucher families, the powerful social forces that fund voucher reform, and defenders of public schools and educational progressivism--suggest avenues for rearticulating voucher families to ultimately more democratic and effective educational reform movements.