Recent focus on student achievement and the effectiveness of schools, school boards, and teachers has lead to increased demands for accountability in education. Large scale assessments are now used in most provinces in Canada to examine the degree to which educational standards are being reached and explore issues of accountability. Alternative models of accountability such as value-added models are gaining popularity in other countries. The current paper explores weaknesses of large-scale annual assessment and investigates the degree to which value-added models may be helpful in looking at educational accountability.