Introduction

One of the purest forms of system-wide accountability seems to be the US policy titled No Child Left Behind that was conceived as a response to ongoing dissatisfaction with American students’ poor academic outcomes. Surprisingly, despite the proliferation of literature on school accountability in general, and the effect of accountability on educators’ work in particular, little attention has been paid to date to educators’ individual accountability, namely, their inclination to feel accountable for their work in connection with accountability policy and professional codes. In education, a field-experiment study on the effect of teacher accountability showed that accountable teachers were more favorably evaluated by their respective principals than non-accountable teachers. Naturally, teachers and principals are at the heart of the significant debate about and practice of accountability. Detrimental implications about educators’ work, such as reduction in scope of teaching, social injustice, and intense pressure on principals and teachers started to emerge.