摘要:Our goal is to identify the current difficulties of school principals in meeting expectations either of the school community or of the educational administration, based on research data, especially that from the survey, “Teachers’ Work in Basic Education in Brazil”, begun in 2009. It is shown that the demands of collectively building school management occur at the same time as schools must respond to the imperatives of accountability policies, which associate results with awards for teachers and schools. Identified as primarily responsible for achieving the best levels of school performance, school principals work in an arena of tensions between autonomy and control.