When the COVID-19 pandemic forced U.S. schools to shutter and teach remotely in March 2020, several states suspended external measures intended to hold educators accountable for student learning. Research on leadership during the pandemic highlights how the pause on external performance measures shifted school leaders' behaviors; they used alternative accountability levers to support teachers and students (Francois & Weiner, 2020; Netolicky, 2020). For example, Weiner et al. (2021) describe how urban school leaders used cultural norms regarding collaboration and care to foster responsiveness and learning (i.e., internal accountability). Such work holds useful implications for future investigations into urban principals' motivations, struggles, and practices during this unprecedented moment and beyond. Building on these contributions, the authors asked: How, in the absence of external accountability measures, did urban school leaders engage their teachers to meet students' and community members' evolving needs? It was found that the 29 urban school principals in this study used internal, market, and moral accountability to address student learning when schools closed and external accountability measures were paused. Therefore, the deficit perspective that these educators can only perform under the pressure of extrinsic accountability is false. Indeed, though participants detailed extraordinary challenges in their schools, the findings illustrate how external accountability's de-emphasis--and other accountability forms' elevation-- may cultivate teacher professional growth, student learning, and just leadership.