The edge of chaos

Much has been written about student accountability, teacher accountability, and school accountability. More limited research is available on administrator accountability. Recently there have been substantial initiatives undertaken world‐wide to increase educational accountability. With increasing demands and changing expectations in the role of school administration, researchers, practitioners and policy makers and departments of education have become socially preoccupied with educational accountability. The purpose of this article is to provide a comprehensive literature review on accountability of school administrators over the last two decades to demonstrate how aspiring, new and practicing school administrators understand and meet the demands of accountability in a time of tumultuous change when the stakes are high.