When you hand a colleague his walking papers, you may feel some pain, too. You may get a knot in your stomach, lose sleep, and avoid looking at yourself in the mirror. Anguish aside, there are many good reasons why teachers should stay out of the judging and firing business. Here are just a few. Most states have a system to weed out teachers through university preparation programs, certification tests, probationary periods, periodic evaluations, and due process hearings.
Every district has a procedure to fire teachers.
In fact, teachers are being fired or forced to resign all the time. Creating a new layer of bureaucracy to duplicate what's already being done is a misuse of valuable teaching resources. Critics of tenure protection conveniently ignore the fact that the courts still won't allow vindictive administrators or special interest vigilantes to roam school corridors looking for victims to burn at their particular, twisted, political stakes. A teacher-driven dismissal system might not be any better than the present dismissal system. Principals are trained and certified to evaluate.