Introduction – Schools and colleges exist in a highly accountable environment, perhaps the most accountable in the history of education. K-12 schools are benchmarked against statewide assessment results, published broadly and open to public review. Colleges and Universities are ranked according to a broad array of quality indicators, which can make or break their ability to attract top students and resources. National and international measures such as NAEP and TIMMS are constantly used as examples of the need for these institutions to improve. On the input side, less is made of the wide disparity between access to resources from state to state, and from school district to district, or from institution, especially urban institutions compared to the average within and outside their system. Leadership is need to draw attention to important issues of accountability, and to advocate for policy and program changes that make a difference.In higher education, equitable access and retention continue to pose significant accountability challenges although, assessing the quality of student learning has recently emerged as the accountability issue of the 21st century. This class provides a preliminary introduction to the connections between accountability and leadership in urban schools, institutions of higher learning, and other work settings. We will identify significant leadership problems related to accountability, collect relevant data, analyze that data, propose an appropriate solution from a leadership perspective, and assess the likelihood of success for the proposed solution with appropriate measures for determining success.Unit Learning Goals – when you finish this unit, you will be able to:Schools and Colleges exist in a highly accountable environment.Leadership is needed to interpret the environment to the organization, its constituents, and to policy makers who can assist in the improvement of the institutions.Define leadership strategies for making organizations and the individuals within them more accountable.Identify the opportunities and constraints that leaders at different levels confront in attempting to hold organizations more accountable and some of the influences on these opportunities and constraints.Utilize leadership strategies to bring about accountability in an organization.Understand the impact of accountability on an organization and its employees.