accountability

I have questions about accountability.  It seems that comparisons are often made that are like comparing apples to orange, and then a penalty is accrued when the apple doesn't live up to being an orange.

A friend of mine is a teacher working under a title I grant.  She says all her students scored higher than the scores of all the students whose programs were models of excellence, but because the % increase in her student's scores was less, that she might lose her funding...this seems to be penalizing someone for doing an excellent job, instead of rewarding them and seeing how they achieved their results.  What kind of accountability is that?