Thomas W Carroll Your Charter Slip Is Showing

To paraphrase Captain Renault, I am shocked to find out charter schools select only the brightest and turn away low achievers.

In today's Albany Times-Union it turns out that The Albany Preparatory Charter School was "milking its books." They were denying admission to wait listed learning disabled students. According to the Times-Union, "Some parents of students who did not perform well on a reading test were counseled that the school was 'not a good fit' or would have their applications denied, according to a scathing new report by the State University of New York's Charter Schools Institute."

What is ironic is The Albany Preparatory Charter School is run by Brighter Choice. Sound familiar? It should to readers of this blog. Brighter Choice was founded by current chairman Thomas W Carroll. Yes, the same Thomas W Carroll whose bragged to me in a tweet that he "opened 11 charter schools," in response to an article he had written in which I tweeted that he is demented.

I think he founded 11 illusory charter schools. All claims by Brighter Choice should be re-examined with a fine tooth comb. Right here Brighter Choice brags how it has the top ranked schools in Albany.

The website for Albany Preparatory Charter School claims; The school is open to all age-eligible students – there are no entrance exams, no eligibility requirements, no income qualifications. Yeah, sure.

One more thing came to light as the crack investigative team here at SBSB held Albany Prep under the magnifying glass. Seems that Thomas W Carroll and Brian Backstrom, Albany Prep's chairman, were president and vice-president of Change-NY, a conservative think tank that helped push Mario Cuomo out of office and brought us George Pataki. They billed themselves as a taxpayer advocacy group. But Carroll and Backstrom seem to have no problem going after government money when it is for their own projects. Like Race to the Top.

I believe this is just the tip of the iceberg as far as malfeasance in charter schools goes. Unfortunately the Albany Times-Union has more guts combined than any of the three papers here in NYC.