Learning and the Obsession with "Accountability"

Dealing with imperfection can be a hard thing, in a world of accountability. I am thinking about how essential it is that teachers allow for "imperfect" learning moments in their classrooms, and the pressure to make these imperfect moments accord with the discourses of "accountability". Teachers are being asked to be accountable for students' learning, as though learning itself were easily targeted behaviors and goals.
    To give an example: what happens when a student's learning of a particular unit in school conflicts with the official narrative of what students are "supposed" to learn? A student comes into a classroom feeling disengaged with the assignment, and tells her teacher that she would learn more if she could do a different assignment. What does the teacher do then, and how to respond to the student's request? According to the "standardized" model of education, all students must be trained in the exact same knowledge, and need to demonstrate the exact same behaviors to show they have learned something of value. But isn't one of the aims of education precisely to allow students to set their own course and understand for themselves what it means to "learn something"? And is modelling a predicted outcome not just encouraging students to act a role of the learner, rather than making the knowledge their own? The view of standardization seems to rely heavily on a behaviorist model of learning: if I demonstrate the proper response, and that response is reinforced into a "habit", then I can say that I have fully learned the unit or the proper response. But is this kind of unreflective, habitual responding a true "learning"? More than anything, I sometimes consider it to be more akin to "adjusting" than to learning.
   If teachers are pressured to administer tests which demonstrate certain "pre-given" responses in students, what happens when they are challenged about this view of learning? Unless a teacher is brave enough to challenge the obsession with accountability, they might see such challenges as an affront or a threat to their livelihood. After all, "I am here to teach what's in the textbook: without it, I can't show the school that my students have learned something." It also overlooks the role of imperfection in the way lessons are administered. "Imperfect" may seem inimical to learning, but the discrepancy between what a teacher presents and how a student "performs" in response is very rich in information about how students learn, as well as what exactly they learn.