Denis Smith writes here about a difficult assignment he set himself. What was one good thing about Donald Trump?
And then he found it!
Donald Trump has exploded the myth that schools should operate like businesses!
He writes:
The disaster that is Donald Trump provides lessons for those who have fostered the myth of a corporate elite class as a needed tonic for educational reform, a term coined to be as deliberately misleading as making those “failing” schools run like businesses.
Never mind that family income is one of the main determinants of student achievement and success in school and that “success” v “failure” is determined in part by zip code. The poverty in the thinking of so-called reformers and right-wing politicians eager to take over poor and struggling urban schools for privatization purposes is notable, encouraging predatory activity, not unlike that practiced by corporate raiders.
The CEO blusters and rants. He bosses people around. He fires them when he doesn’t like their looks or they are not subservient to him.
He changes his mind in a split second.
He bullies people.
He never shows kindness or compassion. He laughs at those he perceives to be weak.
That’s not exactly what Denis wrote. But it is what I learned from watching the Master of the Art of the Deal: Bully the other side. Threaten to walk out. Walk out. Ridicule the other guy. Belittle him or her.
Some deal!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
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Perfect.
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Trump’s oratorical spewings/output are comparable to throwing spaghetti or Hungarian goulash against the wall and see what sticks and makes even less sense.
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More like beef stroganoff – for that authentic Russian flavor!
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Dumpster will go down in the history of this country as the WORST potus ever.
Personally,, think he doesn’t have all his marvels. Must be whet he snorts on a silver tray and a silver spoon. No wonder he wakes up, eats his breakfast in bed along with his white ground up stuff set neast to this breakfast.
When I look at his face, his body, his inability to focus, no mention his sniffing nose suspected as much
Bet that dumpster has a lot of dirt on his people and those who attended his WILD parties.
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His book should be titled “The Art of the Steal”. Deals are made among just and moral men….Trump is neither of those.
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bingo
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Vulture capitalism is what we have inflicted on our young people. Students should be protected from such predatory practices, but they have been tossed into a profit seeking storm. Schools should be governed by elected representatives of a particular community, not corporate cronies. Privatization is mostly about shifting the value of a public asset into private pockets. Business has no big ideas for education or government. G.W. Bush was our MBA president, and Trump is our CEO president. They specialize in extracting profit from everything, not serving the best interests of our country and citizens.
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Plus the primary goal of a business is to make a profit. Supposedly our schools are non profit, so what is the goal to be? “To break even?” Where is the vaunted profit motive? I suggest it is somewhere over there with all of the failed businesses.
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You left out how Trump uses the legal system to bankrupt the people he cheated by not paying contractors and workers what he agreed. When a worker or contractor takes Trump to court to collect what they are owed, he counter sues with a frivolous law suit designed to break them financially so they are forced to drop their case or settle out of court for pennies on the dollar.
Corporations have perfected this process.
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Trumpty Dumpty, aka Don the Con, aka Vlad’s Agent Orange, aka Don Cheeto Trumpbalone, made fear mongering about illegal immigrants the centerpiece of his televised tantrum from the Oval Office. Here’s the truth:
Illegal immigrants have very low crime rates. Spending billions on the stupid wall is like deporting all people named Ralph because over the past decade, three people named Ralph, across the whole of the United States, committed murders.
But cognitively challenged and ignorant people like Mr. Trump have a very difficult time understanding how to interpret statistics and typically, therefore, dismiss them, saying that “You can prove anything with statistics.” No, you can’t. You can misunderstand or misrepresent what the statistics say, but that’s entirely different.
http://time.com/…/mcallen-residents-not-supporting-border-…/
From the Foundation for Economic Education:
“[I]mmigration is not affecting the likelihood of being attacked by terrorist. Your chance of being murdered by anyone is 1 in 14,000. A Cato study found that over the last 41 years, your chances of being killed by a foreigner in a terrorist attack are 1 in 3.6 million per year. The chance of being murdered in an attack committed by an illegal immigrant is much less likely, 1 in 10.9 billion.
“You are more likely to win the lottery (1 in 258.9 million) or die in a plane crash (1 in 11 million) than [to] be murdered in a terrorist attack by an illegal immigrant.” [These stats all represent odds per year, btw, in case you were wondering.]
Why don’t Democrats explain this to people? Because they think that people are too stupid to understand the explanation. What do you think? Do you understand the explanation?
My strong feeling is that until Democrats start explaining this kind of thing to people, they will continue to lose elections.
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Bob,
Steve Miller is the chief writer and source of Trumps blustering about the immigrant population, including the choice to give gory details of murders and other tragedies inflicted by “illegal aliens,” Those examples were in Trump’s televised Oval Office talk (preceded and followed by a solicitation for “Make America Great campaign fund, 2020). Just another gimic: the Oval Office was a stage set for his campaign and hoped-for funding for his……WALL. The followup to the Oval Office tele-prompted talk was a Whitehouse video staged to refresh the images and tragedies of those same cases, with narratives provided by the families of victims.
You have helped me think about all that as an example of the “Ralph” principle. The whole project didn’t get much air time outside of FOX because there was breaking news on other matters, including the prospect that Trump has been a willing pawn of Putin.
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Proud moment for the Koch’s MIT and for Trump (sarcasm) –
The story has been under wraps but, the it’s come out, related to Russian donations to Trump’s inauguration.
MIT’s board of trustees included for years, a Russian oligarch who made a major donation to MIT. The guy was put under sanctions by the Treasury Dept. in April and some time after that, MIT silently removed him from the board. Russia’s attempts to subvert western democracies was cited as a cause for the oligarch’s sanctions. In Russia, the oligarch runs a foundation equivalent to a confederation of Silicon Valley foundations.
David Koch is a lifetime board member of the MIT “corporation”. He and his brother are graduates as well as their father.
Paint me surprised.
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“Never mind that family income is one of the main determinants of student achievement and success in school and that “success” v “failure” is determined in part by zip code.”
No, income is not a determinant. It is a correlate as is zip code. Big difference!
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