Currently the State is guilty of violating its mandated responsibility to parents and their children. Personally, I advocate a class-action lawsuit against the State by parents and educators. Unfortunately, it seems like any effort to resolve an educational issue in this state results from the judicial and not the legislative system. 

Several years ago a court decision found the current financing system illegal.  Interestingly enough it was the court that originally determined the current financing method, which includes the "Robin Hood" clause --- forcing "wealthy" districts to provide some of their tax dollars to "poor" districts.  Note that most districts these days are "poor" districts.

If legislators want to privatize education, that's fine only if taxpayers don't have to foot the bill for it.  Otherwise, legislators simply are looking to cover their own butts for not providing the appropriate and adequate financing during the past decade. Case in point: It is the legislature that has created the current emergency plight of public education by forcing the court to set up a financing system that ensures educational inequality among economic classes and is doomed to fail.

Furthermore, if privatization of public education is our next step, legislators had better put into place a regulated system of tuition and finance costs. We need only observe what has occurred under the recent deregulation of higher education tuition costs to note the critical nature of this issue.

Privatization of public education brings along a whole set of other issues and problems. Ongoing legislative inept short-term thinking is incapable of determining and implementing an entirely new educational system.  In addition, operating two parallel educational systems under the state rubric, public and private, is doomed for failure.  If the state cannot successfully manage and monitor one system, how is it possible for it to maintain two separate education systems?

However, if the real concern is to educate every child equally (which, of course, it isn't), then privatization is NOT the educational road to recovery.  Privatizing education merely will ensure the inequality between the "haves" and the "have-nots" within our society.

Two years ago, the Governor Rick Perry self-appointed yet another Commission on Public Education, which he named "The Texas Tax Reform Commission".  It was headed by Democrat John Sharp and a host of 23 of the governor's major campaign contributors.  There were no parents, educators, middle-class homeowners or students on the commission.  It's hard to imagine this group of businessmen arriving at financing public education improvements that will benefit most Texas families.

Privatizing education is another misguided special interest notion the governor and legislators have selected so they don't have to assume the constitutional responsibility they have been diverting for the past decade.

Isn't it clear yet to everyone that legislators and businessmen are NOT the group needed to develop a quality functional public school system with adequate financing?  During the past decade they have proven beyond a doubt that they are incapable of doing so or wanting to do it.

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Peter Stern of Driftwood, Texas, <pstern@austin.rr.com>, a former director of information services, university professor and public school administrator, is a political writer well-known and published frequently throughout the Texas community and nationwide. He is a Disabled Vietnam Veteran and holds three post-graduate degrees.

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