Is education Maryland’s military industrial complex?

Schools spending, much of it on teacher salaries, is a hard habit to break, lawmakers say

While defense became the driving factor in the federal budget during the Cold War, the $1.3 billion Thornton school funding plan made education a driving force in Maryland’s budget.

Although most lawmakers past and present scoff at the comparison between military and education spending, some see parallels between Eisenhower’s concept and what the Bridge to Excellence in Public Schools Act, as Thornton was formally known, hath wrought on the state budget.

‘‘I think there is a strong connection with the notion of interest group politics,” said Warren G. Deschenaux, director of the General Assembly’s nonpartisan Office of Policy Analysis. ‘‘Teachers have strong interest in seeing money go to school systems because most of what goes to school systems ends up in teachers’ pockets.”

To be sure, many reject any similarity.

‘‘The military industrial complex was filling its own pockets,” said former senator Barbara A. Hoffman, who shepherded the Thornton plan through the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee as chairwoman in 2002. ‘‘You put money into education, you’re creating the leaders of tomorrow. Nobody’s getting rich off it.”

But there are the naysayers. Advocates for Children and Youth criticized the Thornton plan because most of the infusion of state dollars to schools went for teacher salaries.

Montgomery County Public Schools’ $2.07 billion budget for the 2008-2009 school year includes an $81.6 million increase over the prior budget. The state’s contribution to Maryland’s largest school system is $400 million, accounting for $10 million of the increase. Eighty-nine percent of the school system’s budget goes toward salaries and benefits for its 22,000 employees.

The state teachers union defends the increases as money well spent.

‘‘Test scores are up in every jurisdiction in the state since Thornton went into effect,” said Daniel Kaufman, spokesman for the Maryland State Teachers Association.

A survey conducted by the American Federation of Teachers in 2005 — the midpoint of the Thornton funding phase-in — ranked Maryland 12th in average salaries for teachers at $52,330.

That placed the state behind the pack in the Mid-Atlantic region, with New Jersey ranked third in the nation at $56,635; New York ranked sixth at $55,665; Pennsylvania ninth at $53,281; and Delaware 10th at $52,924.

‘‘We are in a very competitive recruiting environment,” Kaufman said.

MSTA thinks of education spending ‘‘as an investment, not an expenditure, because there are studies that show investments in education are going to payoff in the long run in the state’s economy,” he said.

The comparison to military spending is flawed because ‘‘it’s just not an accurate representation to say education is awash in money,” Kaufman said.

There is a more obvious place where the analogy falls apart, Deschenaux said.

‘‘One of the problems with the military industrial complex is it pushes you into war,” Deschenaux said. ‘‘I don’t see the education complex pushing you into that.”

What it pushes for is more accountability, he said.

The six-year phase-in of the Thornton plan led to a 10 percent increase in education spending while other state government agencies’ budgets contracted, Deschenaux said.

With that kind of an impact on the budget, ‘‘people want to know how the money is spent,” he said.

State aid for K-12 education increased $185.1 million to $5.35 billion in fiscal 2009, a 3.6 percent increase over the current fiscal year.

Focusing more money on education has the potential to divert attention from issues such as health care, public safety and transportation at a time when budgets are tight and the statewide enrollment in K-12 is not growing significantly, Senate Minority Leader David R. Brinkley said.

‘‘The fact is so many of these decisions dealing with education are done under the presumption that the state doesn’t have any other responsibilities,” said Brinkley (R-Dist. 4) of New Market.

Unlike war, education is a positive use of tax dollars, lawmakers agreed. But education spending is not always a good thing, some said.

Brinkley, a member of the Budget and Taxation committee, said he too sees an education budget driven by powerful interests such as the state teachers union.

‘‘We have successfully exploited the theory that if you throw money at it, the product will improve. And that hasn’t proven to be the case,” Brinkley said, adding that Harford County’s recent decision to provide a 9 percent pay raise to county employees, including teachers, was ‘‘absurd.”

‘‘Almost all of that Thornton money has gone for teacher salaries,” said Herbert H. McMillan, a former Republican delegate from Annapolis who is president of the Maryland Taxpayers Association. ‘‘Very little has gone into the classroom.”

‘‘[Money] doesn’t make better teachers,” he said.

Nor better students, said McMillan, who contends that state accountability tests such as the Maryland School Assessment and High School Assessment are ‘‘lowering bars to get funding.”

The state’s focus is not likely to stray from education spending anytime soon, he said.

‘‘Funding is like a drug — it’s very difficult to cut once it’s established,” McMillan said.

Sen. Nancy J. King, a member of the Budget and Taxation Committee and former member of the Montgomery County school board, agreed.

‘‘I don’t see us scaling back by any means,” said King (D-Dist. 39) of Montgomery Village. ‘‘We’ve learned so much since starting Thornton.”

Those lessons learned, including the importance of early childhood education and teacher training, are likely to drive budget increases in the future, she said.

Education spending is unlikely to return to the 10 percent increases seen at the peak of the Thornton phase-in, said Senate Budget and Taxation Chairman Ulysses Currie, who rejected the idea that education spending has become an untamable beast.

‘‘Maryland is the wealthiest state in the country because of our higher education system [and] research institutions,” said Currie (D-Dist. 25) of District Heights. ‘‘Corporations want to come to Maryland. Research companies want to come to Maryland. And that’s because of our K-12 education system. ... K-12 education is the backbone of our state and will continue to be.”