Of course, the freedom to experiment comes with a cost. Those who seek to innovate at any level of the system (classroom, school, national policy), and in any kind of innovation (substantive processes of teaching and learning, organizational forms and cultures that encourage innovativeness and learn from it) have to recognize that they are, in fact, experimenting. They do not know the results for sure until they try it. And that imposes a burden on them to ensure that the reasoning and evidence that justifies the experiment is sound. Perhaps even more importantly, the experimenters have an obligation to pay attention to what happens in their experiments, and to report the results to others who are experimenting in similar areas. In short, we have to have system level processes that have two key properties: 1) they encourage not only innovations in all these different domains, but also innovators, and innovativeness at all levels of the system; and 2) they have the capacity to capture and accumulate the results of the experiments that are undertaken.

######## How Much Flex (Discretion) Should We Allow in Five Fold Delegation of National Purpose

An important implication of this simple analysis is that we might have to think about how to adapt the “five-fold model of delegation” to allow a bit more flex in the system to accommodate two important features of a national educational system that are both empirically and normatively important. (Pritchett, 2015) First, one must remember that the “principals” who pay for, regulate, and arbiter the value of the educational system occupy different social and institutional positions. On one hand, there are the citizens, taxpayers and their elected representatives; on the other hand there are the customers or clients of the system, and on the third hand (!) that are those who organize and produce the educational services as they are delivered to participating students. Each of these “principals” claims a right to define what constitutes a good and just educational system, and is in a position to influence what is actually produced and consumed by the system at individual student levels, and what impact that level and distribution of consumption has on aggregate social conditions. (Pritchett, 2017) Second, one must also remember that those who are the “agents” of the system – those who are supposed to act in accord with the preferences of the principal -- have and will use both the de jure and de facto discretion they have as agents to undertake more or less well intentioned efforts to improve educational performance -- defined as they understand the goals of the educational system, and the actions that they think will produce those results. Their judgments both as to ends and means, values and practices, may well differ from those held by other actors in the system whom we had somewhat arbitrarily designated as “principals.” Of course, in order to create more flex in the system to accommodate different ideas about the values that justify educational efforts, the best methods for producing that value, and the social location of real expertise in educational policy and programs, a system designer and manager runs the risk of undermining the discipline, accountability and control that could be relied upon to produce reliable (or better still, excellent) performance. (Pritchett, 2015) But greater flex also offers the advantage of producing some natural or planned variation in practices at different levels of the system that could produce improved performance via several different routes: first, a greater capacity to adapt educational goals and methods to individual, or group, or local jurisdiction characteristics, and therefore produce both greater satisfaction with the responsiveness of the system to the preferences of different