.... but somehow, I feel you were being sarcastic.
Well, I confess to a little sarcasm, at times, under the right circumstances, when I feel up to it, and when the stars are just so, but I don't feel that using public funds to support public education is any less defensible than using public funds to support sewage disposal, police, fire or the courts. To the extent that government involvement in these things redistributes income and wealth (whether upward or downward), I think that the tax side of these issues is as important as the funding side.
My experience has been that government seems to become involved in those areas that the private sector avoids or performs inadequately. This country is committed to educating its young and is committed to educating all of its young. Surely, there are many ways to improve the way we do that, but I think it would be a mistake to underestimate the strength of that underlying commitment.