Norway's educational act requires schools to do a regular evaluation (§ 2-2). The schools must assess to what extent the organisation, facilitation and implementation of teaching contributes to achieving the objectives laid down in the curriculum. The educational act (§ 13-10) states the municipal education authority's responsibility to have a system that ensures that schools evaluate their work and that the municipality follows up this evaluation. The study includes four primary schools in Norway. All schools had implemented a school evaluation. A case study is used to get a better understanding of how schools and principals balance the bureaucratic and professional accountability system's expectations. This study's primary source of data was in depth interviews of principals and teachers. The results from this study describe how two of the principals balanced the use of school evaluation for both external accountability and development, while the other two did not. The paper argues that there is a need for the municipality to look at accountability as a two way process in order to increase the benefit of using evaluations as a part of school improvement processes.