This isn't 'automated' accountability. But it is a real answer, not the short-cut that many people are looking for with standardized testing.
Also, what makes you think school administrators have some answers that teachers don't when it comes to how to do the job, or have any idea, really, how to fairly and correctly evaluate teacher performance. Similarly, why do the same people who routinely call for teachers to be fired for poor performing classrooms never seem to want to hold administrators and school boards to account for their poor performance? Why do state and local governments who cut education funding year after year get a pass?
I think it's a comforting world view to think that if we could just bust the teacher's unions and start firing people, we'd get real results. But it ignores the fact that the system is broken in may more ways—and in many worse ways—than just the teachers.
Of course there are other problems to be solved. But the fact that there are no effective controls whatsoever on teacher performance, and that teaching is not a highly selective profession, is still a problem.
[1] See: http://www.epi.org/publication/bp278/ and http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/meet-a...
Are you saying that a teacher's supervisor (the principle) shouldn't be in charge of evaluating their performance?
Are you assuming that I think administrators and school boards shouldn't be held accountable as well?
Are you assuming that I'm saying firing people will fix the system?
If we can't overcome a problem as simple as firing bad teachers, how can we address so many of the other issues that face the school system? Does the fact that other problems exist mean we should ignore this problem?
Of course a teacher's supervisor should be in charge of evaluating them. But they must be competent to do so and they should do so through evaluation of individual lesson plans and classroom observation, not the performance of the teacher's students on a standardized test. That's not a straw man by the way, there are a lot of people in this debate who think that's an acceptable metric for making decisions on compensation and hiring and firing [1]. Whether you are one of them, I have no idea. But the argument you make above is one I have encountered many times, and typically its adherents are quite myopic about the culpability of everyone else in the system.
Of course there should be a way to evaluate teachers and hold them accountable. And there should be a way fire them if it's called for. But it has to be equitable. And it shouldn't hold teachers hostage to factors they don't control. But even granting you that, I haven't seen any evidence that this is going to lead to much an improvement in the educational system. There are much bigger problems here than "bad teachers".