#state projects

Governor Umo Eno of Akwa Ibom State has dismissed a circulating list of commissioner nominees and other appointees as fake, emphasizing that those included have already disqualified themselves from consideration. He revealed plans to submit the official list of new commissioners to the Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly next week for approval, as part of his efforts to reconstitute a fresh…

New Post has been published on http://www.therakyatpost.com/news/2014/06/23/dont-rely-state-projects-kedah-govt-linked-firms-told/

Don't rely on state projects, Kedah govt-linked firms told

KUALA LUMPUR, June 23:

The time has come for companies linked to the state to stop relying on state-level projects.

Kedah Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Mukhriz Mahathir said companies such as Bina Darulaman Berhad must look outside the state because there were a lot opportunities available nationwide.

He said the country was developing very fast and there were many projects BDB could bid for.

“They can develop step by step, first by identifying the project, looking for a partner or by working with others.”

Speaking to reporters after launching the BDB operations office here, he said BDB must be responsible for its own investments and it was not answerable to the MB’s office.

He added that the company could not continue to rely on state handouts to develop.

He reminded the company that success would not come overnight and it would have to work hard at it.

BDB group managing director Datuk Izham Yusof said the company was consolidating its position and strengthening its balance sheet at the moment and expected profit to remain the same as last year at RM21.14 million.

He said the company was looking at expanding its land bank as most its land had already been used up.

He said the 6,000sq ft office here would allow the company to showcase its products to its partners.

He said this was also to show its partners that it was no longer only Kedah-based.

Izham said they were in discussions with several parties, but no announcement could be made yet.

These were the recommendations sent to us regarding a student's Academic Validation Project (AVP) which is used when the student is having difficulty passing the state tests.

Now, I went to the grading of these exams and have therefore seen the rubrics and to say that I was livid about this is an understatement. While many of them came back from grammar, that specific sentence as the main point of that persons requested revisions definitely caught me where it hurts.

1) The rubric does not mention anything about grammar other than "errors that interfere with meaning." The stories all made sense. I know, because I read them and so did other teachers. At the end of the day, we are using holistic scoring so even if that was the case, that should not have been the whole project being returned. I also know because I scored some of the projects including those that did not use standard English and only sent back those that did not have the modifiers as requested since that was the skill being tested.

2) They were writing narratives. If the student chose for this to be his style, maybe that was intentional. It wasn't, but suppose it was. Plenty of authors have used run-on sentences, no punctuation, and no capital letters and they are famous!

3) The point of the project was to demonstrate mastery about modifiers (use of single and phrase modifiers). The project demonstrated that. What's the problem?

4) (While this shouldn't have been an issue in the first place) if nothing else, most of the projects were sent with the students IEPs attached to them! And you want to send them back for the grammar even though they mastered the concept!

I have never seen anything so petty in my life. Don't get me wrong; I think grammar is important but when most schools no longer teach it, how are students supposed to learn and keep up with it. And there is also a time and place for the grammar to take center stage. Based upon the rubric provided by the state, this was not that time!

Beyond the grammar, there were some comments about the answers that the students had. They were marked wrong for answers that other students had as well. It may not have been worded the same but the keywords needed were all there!

I just don't understand how this is the process! People want to talk about differentiation and everything else under the sun for individualizing education and incorporating culture but the moment someone uses AAVE they are told that it is unacceptable and they are not "standard." 

I also think that in terms of alternative schools, you spend all of this time making sure that we don't grade projects from our own schools, but do nothing to ensure that graders don't get students that they may have had at their schools last year who set their classrooms on fire! I'm not saying that's the case here, but it does also make you wonder.

Either way, I am thoroughly upset by this entire process and just needed to get it down somewhere. If you think I'm being unreasonable, please chime in.