accountability vs documentation

I read a blog post over at David Warlick's blog yesterday that got me thinking. Then today I was having a conversation with one of my teachers discussing accountability and I used J.D.'s quote reference about a teacher documenting more than doing anything else. So, first I read it, then I quoted it, now I am asking questions about it! Is it true that the typical teacher is now so tied up in documentation that they don't have time to teach? How do we hold ourselves accountable for the classroom if not in documentation?

Now accountability has been around for a while; but, has it gotten worse with all of these new tools (Web 2.0) that many people don't know how to implement? Is it harder for a principal to see that learning is going on in the room or for the teacher to prove that he/she is doing something better if the outsiders seeing it don't really know what is going on in the room? Is it that there is just so much information now that we have to prove (through documentation) that we are teaching something (anything) and that takes even longer?