Talk of accountability (or the lack thereof ) dominates current Canadian education debates. We're not alone in this regard. Mawhinney (1998) observes that "the educational reform agenda in many industrialized nations today is driven by a perceived crisis in accountability" (p. 98). Unfortunately, as Earl (2001) also reminds us, "accountability is rarely clearly defined. It is an emotionally charged concept that everyone agrees is good, with little agreement about how it works or what it looks like." This publication is an attempt to shed some light on the concept from a teacher organization perspective. The Canadian Teachers' Federation has identified accountability in education as a priority issue. As part of a continuing effort to address issues related to standardized testing, school rankings, teacher testing, and narrow performance indicators, this report on educational accountability has several objectives: (1) To emphasize that public accountability is a fundamental principle underlying public education; (2) To demonstrate that the teaching profession is clearly not opposed to accountability but rather, to "accountability" as it is narrowly construed in terms of test scores, "league tables" ranking schools and accountability systems based on rewards and sanctions. Teachers' organizations believe it is time to recast the concept of accountability; (3) To examine educational accountability and its relationship to equity and other issues in order to contextualize and enrich our understanding of accountability as teacher organizations; and (4) To contribute to a constructive counter-discourse on the subject of educational accountability by outlining elements of a comprehensive accountability framework. This framework highlights shared responsibility and professional accountability as an alternative to market-based and bureaucratic accountability models. A bibliography is included. (Contains 34 endnotes.)