systems of government to imagine and explore alternative systems for encouraging innovation and learning in national educational system. The obvious advantage of this idea is that they permit the analysis of variation that occurs at relatively macro institutional levels. If one wants to explore the question of how changing state level systems of regulation and financing influence state level educational performance, and, in particular, how those state level systems can work to prioritize different individual and social level goals of education, and encourage sustained innovations that can help to advance those goals, one has to look at units of analysis that have influence at this level of the system. Looking at states in a given country have the advantage of (to some degree) “controlling for” the effects of both history and national culture while allowing for the investigation of particular features of state level governance of the system. But it will always be hard to make such inquires fully scientific. The challenge is to explore complex systems with many variables, non-linear effects, and unknown feedback loops with a limited number of cases – the kind of experience from which one might be able to learn or guess something, but hardly draw scientific conclusions.

######## Land Grant Universities and the Development of American Agriculture and Mining

A second interesting example is provided by the American effort to promote agriculture and mining in the path of the Westward settlement of the United States in the late 1800’s. The fantastic economic growth of the United States in that period was largely driven by growth in these sectors produced by a population that was “going west.” What they found in the west was land that could be used for agriculture and mining, if the settlers could figure out how to do that. To support the development of both knowledge and on the ground capacity to farm and mine, the Federal Government created a system of land grant universities. These land grant universities provided the base for a complex system of basic and applied research, educational efforts directed at researchers, professionals and newcomers to these fields, and strenuous efforts to bring the learning that was occurring in the universities and the extension labs to those plowing and mining the land through a complex system of county agents that travelled their states disseminating knowledge, and suggesting solutions to local problems. The extension labs and county agents may have started out as developers and purveyors of knowledge and good practices. But soon they became conduits for identifying and seeking answers to problems that they encountered in their work with farmers and miners, and their efforts to apply basic scientific knowledge to the practical problems of growing things, and separating value dirt from less valuable dirt. It is unclear exactly how much the dramatic growth in the level and overall productivity of the agriculture and mining system owes to these institutions and processes, but this system might hold some lessons for organizing national systems for improving productivity in educational activities, and a particular way of organizing the relationship between universities, ed schools, educational experts and consultants.

######## The Accumulation of Knowledge Through Reporting on the Effect of Specific Medical Protocols

A third example may not be an example because I am not sure I have an accurate description of the process that I think is actually being used in the medical system. But what I observed when my mother was being treated for cancer seemed to be an interesting way to take advantage of a system