Former Pataki hack Tom Carroll used to be the very public voice of the Brighter Choice charter school system in Albany. But since the charters for his two middle schools were not renewed by the state earlier this year, Carroll has had little to say.
Scott Waldman of Capital NY, who was able to get quote from Carroll when he was the education reporter for the Albany Times Union and Brighter Choice was flying high, got nothing for his article headlined "The education model that fell apart".
Early on, we find why Carroll has nothing to say anymore:
Once heralded as a new beginning for children living in grinding poverty and stuck in a long-troubled school district, Albany’s charter system has so far failed to live up to that promise. Five of the 12 charter schools that opened in the last decade have already closed, and others are being skeptically eyed by state officials.
More, below.
First, more about Carroll -- he was a Republican operative who, as head of fat-cat-funded CHANGE-NY, helped elect George Pataki in 1994. He went to work for Pataki on getting NY to authorize charter schools, then set up Brighter Choice as a "nonprofit" that now runs eight (soon to be six) privatized schools in Albany.
Back in 2009, Carroll's total income from his "nonprofit" venture was estimated at $328,000 by the Times Union. Now Waldman estimates Carroll's take as "more than $400,000 annually." In short, charter schools have made this GOP operative with no education experience or credentials a millionaire.
Some background from the Capital NY story:
In Albany, all of the charter schools currently operating were supported by the Brighter Choice Foundation, created by Pataki-era officials who helped write the state’s charter laws. Once considered a gold standard of charter operations, two Brighter Choice middle schools were closed by the state’s Charter Schools Institute after just five years in operation, because 80 percent of the students were not proficient in English and math. Other charter schools in Albany, including an all-girls high school with a graduation rate of 51 percent, could be shuttered in the near future for poor performance.
I'm sure Carroll's minions are now frantically teaching to the test at Albany Leadership Charter High School for Girls to try to save it.
Waldman's article mentions the real reason the state closed the Brighter Choice middle schools -- more than 80 percent of the schools' students were not proficient in math and English. And he adds a telling detail:
At the Brighter Choice middle schools he helped create, as well as at two other schools his foundation supported, state charter officials determined that Carroll’s grand vision of a better education alternative never came to fruition and voted to close them. Before the Charter Schools Institute voted to close the schools, Natasha Howard, the institute’s managing director of programs, said she saw teachers allowing students to sleep in class without opening their textbooks, according to the Times Union.
“Renewing these two schools would send the message that SUNY trustees accept that status quo,” she said, according to the paper.
The state comptroller quickly followed with an audit questioning why $115,779 in payments were made by the school to the Brighter Choice Foundation for “legal assistance, advocacy, curriculum design and test administration” without any evidence that it received anything of value for those services.
I hope Comptroller Tom DiNapoli continues to follow the money, because that is the key to how Brighter Choice enriched Carroll while doing little to improve publicly funded education in Albany.
Carroll's outfits have received tax-exempt millions from the Waltons and less-well-known billionaires Bruce Kovner and Richard Gilder (at least). Call me cynical, but I do not believe those people give a hoot about inner-city education, while they probably do care a great deal about weakening/destroying unions, for political and business reasons. And is that really philanthropic?
One thing DiNapoli should look into how Carroll's various "nonprofits" used public and/or tax-exempt monies to lobby against passage of the city schools budget in 2011.
As I wrote back then, Carroll's "nonprofit" groups spent untold thousands on three citywide direct mailings, telephone push polls, and radio ads dissing the superintendent.
Albany's charter schools have all the problems of most charter schools around the country -- cherry-picking students, in one way or another; sending students with behavioral and/or academic problems back to the public system; inexperienced teachers and principals, with resultant high turnover; inexperienced leadership (Carroll is not unique); unproven gimmicks like uniforms and single-sex schools; stalwart insistence on minimal regulation and financial disclosure; and, generally, no better educational results.
And then some -- when a former GOP political operative sets up a bunch of nonunion charter schools in a state capital, it seems to be that he is still working as a GOP political operative, with the ever-Republican goal of weakening/destroying unions that tend to support Democrats by dissing union workers as lazy and/or incompetent and reducing the number of dues-paying members.
IMHO, that's what Brighter Choice has always been about, and that's always been a well-paid wingnut welfare gig.
That this particular union-busting scheme is mostly paid for by local, state and federal taxpayers is outrageous.
That it is supported by too many Democrats, from President Obama and Governor Cuomo on down, is deeply disappointing.