$2,000 for this?

Watch out, Texas teachers. The Texas Legislature has you in their crosshairs. While a $2,000 across-the-board pay raise is bandied about (that would put Texas within $5,000 of the national average-- whoopee!), there could be a steep tradeoff:

Sen. Florence Shapiro, the Plano Republican who heads the Senate's education committee, said she plans to attach a proposal that increases accountability for Texas schools to her chamber's version of a tax overhaul.

One proposal — to reconstitute campuses deemed academically unacceptable two years in a row — is tougher than what the federal law requires. Under Shapiro's plan, a campus intervention team would decide which, if any, of the existing faculty could remain.

If the school has had the same principal for the past two years, that principal must go.

The school also could be subject to management from a private, nonprofit company or face being closed.

"How can you leave a school open that's failing our children?" Shapiro said. "If a school has been low-performing for at least two years, in my view, that's a bad school."

There it is. Privatization. Privatize everything. This is the answer to all of our nation's ills, to the drown-our-government-in-a-bathtub crowd. It's worked oh so well in so many other areas, right? Yeah, right.

And further, this is a great incentive for teachers to go to the hard-to-staff schools. Hey, go here, work your but off for two years and then you, too, can be unceremoniously fired!

This is clearly the stuff of genius.