The failures of NPM-inspired ideas to address classic challenges to public administration, and the way NPM subsequently created new dysfunctions in bureaucratic activities inspired this paper to scrutinize and decide which theoretical components in this field deserve to be retained, and which should be abandoned. This is motivated by public concern to find practical solutions to policy implementation problems and not any conviction that, somewhere out there, there is a new ‘grand theory’ that needs to be discovered. The implementation of the teacher validation policy in Ghana is used in this study to illustrate some of the challenges in public administration that require scholars to make use of the wide range of analytical tools already available. This is done through a study of how frontline agents for the teacher validation policy at the local education offices exercise discretion in the course of implementing the policy. For conceptualization purposes, this paper used the street level bureaucratic theory which is an offshoot of the principal agency theory and argues that the theory remains an increasingly popular approach to the analysis of public administration when linked with a set of other theories such as discretion and accountability. This is a qualitative research that used interviews, focus group discussions and documentary evidence to collect data from a sample size of 31 out of a population of 49. The study used the grounded theory framework to analyse the data, and found out that frontline agents are the ultimate makers of the teacher validation policy but concludes that it is important to constrain their discretions in order to bring accountability to discretionary judgements.
