This paper addresses the contestation over progressive pedagogies in the context of policy discourses around schooling in Australia in the 21stC. It considers the tensions between contradictory policy frames that simultaneously encourage and espouse progressive pedagogies that are situated and innovative in order to meet 21stC student and knowledge economy needs and those that produce tighter control over the core work of pedagogy and curriculum due to the accountability mechanisms of globalised testing regimes and localised education markets. Principals play a key role in translating and mediating competing policy tensions promoting innovation and standardisation. Case studies of Victorian urban schools from an Australian Research Council project Redesigning Schools and Leadership and a DEECD funded OECD Innovative Learning Environments project highlight how principals in public schools in high poverty areas mobilize a range of policy affordances as well as available systemic and systematic state support in order to buffer innovative practices against external policy pressures. The issue is to what extent they have the capacity to sustain this activity in changing conditions of possibility arising from shifts in policy and the ratcheting up of accountability through performative mechanisms such as standardized assessments and comparative websites.