During much of the previous nine years, Tom Carroll had overseen the launch of eight charter schools in Albany. All of Tom Carroll's Albany charter schools made Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). Not only that, they had become the best schools in the city. Tom Carroll now runs the Foundation for Education Reform & Accountability (FERA), which furnishes research help to charters, and serves as chairman of the Brighter Choice Foundation (BCF), which provides start-up financing aid. On the 2009 state test in English language arts, in four of the six grades tested, the top school in Albany was one of Carroll's charters. Albany public school parents, mostly black and mostly poor, not only have a choice; they have one that will make a significant difference in their children's futures. The Brighter Choice network has turned largely forgotten students into serious achievers. These schools have not only closed the achievement gap; they have reversed it. A veteran of the sharp-elbowed politics of New York's infamously dysfunctional state legislature (called the worst in the nation by the Brennan Center for Justice in 2004), Carroll assembled a team of equally determined and savvy colleagues. Carroll and his colleagues, now fully engaged in their roles as school reformers, established the Charter School Resource Center to offer technical assistance to anyone willing to set up a charter school. The author discusses how Carroll and his colleagues have brought high-quality charter schools to scale, giving hope to a generation of disadvantaged kids. (Contains 1 figure.)