Has the culture of accountability become a culture of fear for school leaders? In this article, the authors share the stories of three successful principals whose careers and reputations were altered by the impact of a set of test scores. The authors suggest that perhaps this culture of educational accountability, created by well-intended policy makers aiming to improve schools, has instead become a culture of fear, driven by unanticipated consequences of the system. For example, school leaders, whose performance was once assessed using a variety of indicators that reflected the complexity of the job, are now finding their effectiveness determined in much narrower terms.