the next level of accountability rests with the school again the level of trust that the larger community extends to its schools seems to engender a strong sense of collective responsibility for the success of every student while every comprehensive school in finland reports to a municipal authority authorities vary widely in the quality and degree of oversight that they provide they are responsible for hiring the principal typically on a six or sevenyear contract but the daytoday responsibility for managing the schools is left to the professionals as is the responsibility for assuring student progress but that is not the case because american schools at least in the cities and most suburbs get much more direction from the local district central office than is typically the case in other countries in that sense the united states may have traded one form of centralised bureaucracy for another