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The Future of education: President Obama should keep President Ike Eisenhower in mind

JUST DAYS AFTER the 50th anniversary of President Eisenhower's warnings of the dangers of a military-industrial complex, President Obama's State of the Union message promised an ever-larger education-industrial complex.

JUST DAYS AFTER the 50th anniversary of President Eisenhower's warnings of the dangers of a military-industrial complex, President Obama's State of the Union message promised an ever-larger education-industrial complex.

No one noted the irony, which is too bad because the half-century-old battle over the size and shape of the military holds lessons for managing our even more expansive public schools.

As Eisenhower said, through the first 160 years of U.S. history, we had no permanent arms industry - rather "American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well." Yet in World War II and the Cold War, such improvisation was insufficient, and we were "compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions." For the first time in U.S. history, huge government-funded labs fed innovations to a huge private-arms industry supplying 3.5 million men and women under arms, a national-security sector larger "than the net income of all United States corporations."

As Eisenhower feared, the military-industrial complex altered "the very structure of our society."

Politicians steered defense spending to their constituencies, making the military more of a jobs program. Meanwhile, defense-related grants to universities created "big science," turning colleges and universities from serving students to chasing dollars. Yet despite Ike's warnings, respectable opinion questioned the patriotism, and at times even the sanity, of defense critics.

The military-industrial complex reached its peak in the Kennedy years, taking a tenth of the gross domestic product and roughly half of federal spending.

But it was not to last. The Great Society expansion of domestic spending lessened the relative importance of defense outlays, even as Vietnam made it fashionable to attack the military. Whistle-blowers revealed Pentagon waste, and organizations like the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities contested defense outlays.

From half of federal spending under Kennedy, the Pentagon fell to about a fifth under Carter. From more than 10 percent of GDP in 1962, defense spending fell to 4.6 percent in 1979 before rebounding a bit under Reagan. Today, we are fighting two wars with just 4.7 percent of the GDP and near constant criticism of defense budgets and tactics.

The funny thing is, as the military industrial complex shrank and faced external criticism, it became more disciplined, more focused and better at fighting wars. Limiting money and power forced the military to become more innovative, and ultimately more effective.

All of which holds lessons for Obama should he try to reform rather than merely expand an education-industrial complex accounting for more than $900 billion and 6.9 percent of GDP.

First, the education-industrial complex has grown rapidly, but that growth can't be sustained. The ratio of students to staff in our public schools fell from 19.3-1 in 1950 to 9.8-1 in 1980, and was on a linear path to reach a 1-1 ratio by 2006, a true Great Society growth rate. Yet after 1980, the decline leveled out, with the pupil-to-staff ratio still at 8-1 in 2006, a Reagan-era growth rate. (No one thinks we'll ever have one teacher per student.)

Second, just as supporters of the military questioned the patriotism of the critics, so too do conventional educators question the motives of education reformers. The president should pay this no mind. Many governors and mayors and every president since Reagan have pushed school reform, and few have been hurt at the ballot box.

Third, though Obama would love to spend more money on public education, sometimes less is more. If bureaucracies are guaranteed more money every year, they have no incentive to spend smarter. As Frederick Hess and Eric Osberg show in "Stretching the School Dollar," much of the money spent by traditional public schools has no impact on student learning, and should be reallocated. And just as less is more, sometimes more is less.

The president wants to lead the world in the percentage of college graduates, but if we do this by dumbing down college, students will be no better educated.

If Obama and other policymakers can remember these three things, there's every reason to think that Americans can have a public-education system equal to our military, which is second to none.

Robert Maranto (rmaranto@uark.edu) is the 21st- century chair in leadership in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas.