State education officials are so tired of telling the politicians that the education crises in Texas is a threat to our future they are taking it to the streets. The Houston Chronicle picks up the story, using what almost seem like dire warnings of a Hispanic culture takeover in Texas. Here are some facts that I hope we can provide without race-baiting. Hispanics make up 45% of public school enrollment. The dropout rate among Hispanics is 48%. Between 200 and 2004 the Hispanic population in Texas grew by 1.2 million.

Those figures are used to bear out the educators cries that the state is not funding education in Hispanic majority districts in such a way that provides quality education to reduce dropout rates and provide an educational background to get the poorest school students a way out of poverty through education.

Why is an educated population important to Texas? Education provides a good candidate pool for employers and helps people find higher paying jobs. Higher paying jobs lead to higher tax revenues. Without tax revenues, the state cannot fund anything, much less education. See the cycle? It's cruel.

The Perry administration's pitiful school finance reform does not provide true reform in the school funding of urban and poor districts or programs to reduce dropout rates.

In the most simplest of terms, we totally suck at providing public education to our children in Texas. What are you going to do about it?

"Unless Texas changes course, we doom an entire generation of kids," said Rep. Pete Gallego, D-Alpine, the state House Mexican American Caucus chairman. "We don't doom them to mediocrity. It's worse than that because we take away their opportunity."