"Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been subtracted."

I'd urge you to read all (it isn't long) of the article from The Atlantic titled "What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success." Just about everything important, it turns out:

Since the 1980s, the main driver of Finnish education policy has been the idea that every child should have exactly the same opportunity to learn, regardless of family background, income, or geographic location. Education has been seen first and foremost not as a way to produce star performers, but as an instrument to even out social inequality.

(emphasis added)
Read the rest; the title quote is from Pasi Sahlberg, director of the Finnish Ministry of Education's Center for International Mobility and author of the new book Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland?