Winter 2008

By Chester E. Finn Jr.      
Chairman, Koret Task Force on K-12 Education
President, Thomas B. Fordham Foundation    

Eight years ago, Hoover Institution director John Raisian contacted me (and 10 others) with a tantalizing idea: assemble some of America’s most interesting, productive, and heterodox K–12 education experts on a regular basis to explore mutual interests and joint projects, with the expectation that the whole would turn out to be greater than the sum of its parts.

Hoover already had several highly regarded education analysts on its full-time staff, but it was clear to me and to John and to others he consulted that doing this right meant reaching well beyond Palo Alto, creating a sort of virtual faculty of reform-minded education thinkers and policy wonks whose homes and “day jobs” were spread from the Pacific to the Atlantic (and, from time to time, overseas).

The first challenge, of course, was determining whom to invite and how to attract them, especially since (as in the old Groucho Marx joke) those most worth recruiting were those least likely to have time to participate.

Nobody had a formula for this. It was a novel, 21st-century project for a major think tank. There was a bit of hit-or-miss. In retrospect, though, three elements proved indispensable:

• -- The group would be diverse, but not ridiculously so. The diversity arises because Task Force members hail from multiple disciplines and bring differing emphases to the table, thus assuring lively, probing conversations and refreshing team opportunities while still sharing the same basic education values. (Interesting factoid: only one of us had a primary day job within a school of education.) This wasn’t Noah’s Ark–style diversity, the sort that produces endless, fruitless debates—picture your typical faculty meeting—among people who cannot agree on first principles, sometimes even on the nature of the problem they are trying to solve, and who may not actually like being in the same room. Rather, it was the creative tension that arises when economists and political scientists engage each other, when curriculum experts and psychologists tackle the same issue from distinct angles, all within a loose framework of shared values and cordial fellowship.
• -- The group was a manageable size: 11. That’s a prime number but not a magic number, and we aren’t superstitious. Still, it’s just about the right number of individuals—especially when they’re all strong-willed, articulate, and outspoken—to get around a table in a format that feels right, gives everyone a chance to participate in full, yet allows for the aforementioned diversity of perspective.

-- The cost-benefit ratio was right. Thanks in large measure to the perceptive generosity of the Koret Foundation, Hoover was able to offer what felt to Task Force members like fair compensation for their time and effort. In addition, the Task Force demands were not excessive: two regular meetings per year, generally two days each, plus in-between work (at our own convenience) on writing assignments and other projects, plus the occasional special meeting or conference call. The astute John Raisian structured the compensation such that the more one did for Hoover and the Task Force, the more one might earn.

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