Tough Love Rylander

Technically, she came to praise the Austin Independent School District, not to bury it. But at her recent news conference, State Comptroller Carole Keeton Rylander sounded a lot more like One Tough Grandma (as she dubbed herself in her 1998 campaign) than a friend of the public schools.

Officially, AISD is making "satisfactory" progress in implementing changes recommended in Rylander's April 2000 Texas School Performance Review (TSPR) audit of the district. But Rylander criticizes the district for not taking all of her advice. Flanked by vocal AISD critics Rev. Sterling Lands (whose East Side Action Coalition has explored a wholesale secession of East Austin schools from AISD) and Mayor Gus Garcia, her successor as AISD board president, Rylander blamed AISD for wasting money and condemning Austin's children of color to a second-class education.

In the AISD "progress report" document itself, Rylander gives due props to AISD "best practices" such as the magnet program that, in its wisdom, the district is poised to radically revise (see "Ten Down ... 90% to Go," p.22). Yet Rylander has gone into overdrive, focusing on the seven (out of more than 150) TSPR recommendations the district has not yet followed. (Among them: financial incentives for teachers to work in high-need schools and selling its West Sixth Street headquarters, even though the complex already houses an expensive citywide public-sector telecom network used by the city, AISD, and other entities.) Though AISD has adopted most of Rylander's nostrums for fixing chronically low-performing schools (all on the Eastside), Madam Comptroller complains that AISD is "holding children hostage in neighborhood schools that have been low performing."