Disagree. What is "hypothesis testing" (a well-established element of inferential statistics) if a hypothesis is "without a way to make or test predictions" (according to you)? And other problems.
"For a hypothesis to be a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it." [Wikipedia: Hypothesis]
So you're talking about a theoretical free-market company that doesn't exist. The rest of us are talking about actual companies as they really exist, which are generally irrational, poorly run, anti-democratic, and at the whim of some possibly charismatic but out-of-touch business owner. Small or large. Whether with natural, artificial, or no monopoly.
"There are no 'corporate-style administrators' in public schools..."
Pretty much all of your statements are factually false, so I'll just deal with the very first one as an exercise. Consider where I teach: the City University of New York, the largest public urban university in the country. Ultimately CUNY is run by its Board of Trustees (mostly appointed by the mayor and governor). In the last 25 years, how many corporate executives have been on the board? 24 (53% of the total). How many corporate lawyers have been on the board? 12 (27% of the total). How many many labor leaders have been on the board? 0 (zero). How many of the current trustees have a PhD? 0 (zero). How many make their living teaching at a university? 2 (out of 15).
http://www.psc-cuny.org/clarion/may-2014/cuny-trustees%E2%80%99-index
I read this as whining that an administrator just doesn't want to do any friggin' work as part of their job (namely: document and prove that a teacher is negligent). Here is a study on when unions are more involved in hiring/firing of teachers, and the result is that they are far more aggressive about firing teachers than administrators.
"Nonetheless, CTs [consulting teachers] rose to the challenge - not in all cases, but at a much higher rate than principals - and when necessary, they recommended nonrenewal... The result was that out of 88 new teachers who were in the program in its first year, 11 (12.5 percent) were not renewed for employment... In the year immediately before PAR [peer assistance and review], only three teachers out of a teaching force of almost 3,000 were not renewed."
I've also seen this kind of thing first-hand. At my current job observations are done by fellow teachers (sit in my class for an hour, fill out a detailed 7-page report, have a sit-down conversation with me after I read it, every semester). At my prior job observations were to be done by the assistant dean (bagged it off for 3 years, I begged and pleaded to get something on file, he sat in on an introductory computer class for 5 minutes, wrote down a notecard-sized piece of garbled nonsense totally unrelated to the class content). In summary: Administrators are pretty lazy about doing their job.
And yet all these better-performing countries have more leftist governments, stronger social safety nets, more concern about equity, and less economic inequality.
I think your Google glasses were set on "opposite vision" when you read the article.
I would submit that the teachers' unions are practically the only thing keeping the U.S. public school system halfway functioning. The more the system has been taken over by non-teaching corporate-style administrators, the more it's gone down the toilet (and the more those administrators have used it as a stick to further beat down the unions). Foreign countries with stronger unions also have stronger educational outcomes.
The choice is effectively between having decisions on how students are taught made by either (a) Dilbert and friends, or (b) their Pointy-Haired Boss. Choose wisely.
The House Leadership is all GOP. They've claimed that their number one priority is stopping whatever Obama wants. Mostly they've done that -- except on this one single thing, namely freedom online, they decide to roll over. So this serves as a pretty good test for both parties as to what their true priorities are.
Obama's a pretty terrible President, but when push comes to shove it's a good check-in that the reason for that is that he really wants the same things as the GOP.
I'm sure that FBI Director James Comey has specific case files he can point to of this actually happening, and wasn't engaging in hyperbolic BS like he normally does.
Maybe you were too drunk to notice.
"Logical Fallacies -- Changing the Subject: The fallacies in this section change the subject by discussing the person making the argument instead of discussing reasons to believe or disbelieve the conclusion. While on some occasions it is useful to cite authorities, it is almost never appropriate to discuss the person instead of the argument."
Of course, that example isn't the legal risk area, is it? The legal danger isn't when an engineer says something outrageous and the vanity mirror pops off (clearly unrelated if assessed in a court trial), the problem is when the engineer wrote "rolling sarcophagus" and later the car actually became a "rolling sarcophagus" (then you've got proof of advance management negligence).
That is: the legal risk for company management is when the engineer is actually telling the *truth*, so in response they want the engineers to *lie* (or at least obscure problems).
"you shouldn't convict [a law enforcement officer] because they might be lying."
I would *love* for an independent agency to investigate shootings like this, and bring evidence to a prosecutor, and having the prosecutor bring the case to court and a jury, and if the evidence is weak or murky have the jury apply the "innocent until proven guilty" (or specifically, "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt") principle. That would be great. But we both know that none of that will happen, police almost always get a free pass on shootings like this. We are not within even several country miles of a jury being seated to make a decision in any case like this.
My point was that I do not give credence to police either in a public statement (which great-grandparent poster took at face value), nor separately in cases when police testify for the prosecution of some other person (by far the most common case), when I am on a jury.
Despite not smoking pot, I do very much hope it gets legalized everywhere. That way you can lose your fascist job enforcing it and get to be a raving, irrelevant full-time drunk supported by your mom.
"police officials said"
And police never gun down unthreatening people, and never lie about it afterward. Just sayin': you can't have anywhere close to 100% confidence about these cases.
If I was on a jury I'd need video corroboration before believing anything asserted by police.
"Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberrys!" -- Monty Python and the Holy Grail
