I know I have educators out there!
I need to speak to a teacher or administrator or parent (and if I’m really lucky — a student) who has experience with the pay for grades programs that are showing up in NYC, Texas and now Atlanta. These are the programs where kids earn money for good grades. If you are a teacher or school administrator who has experience teaching/working with these programs or a parent of a student whose school uses a similar program (usually these are high school students so not like stickers for an A on a spelling test or pizza coupons for reading books), will you let me know?
I’m on tight deadline and unfortunately HARO didn’t help this reporter out.
When I was in high school, we had one of those programs. We got free pizza, hamburgers at mcdonalds, movie tickets, etc. I think I ate my weight in hamburgers because we got one free each DAY if we had the right kind of sticker. It was about 15 years ago, though, so maybe my experience gorging on burgers wouldn’t be so useful
No, this is actual pay for grades:
http://www.edutopia.org/pay-prizes-reward-student-performance
Here’s more about it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/21/nyregion/21fryer.html?ref=education
(Thank you for the button!!!)
Did you try PR newswire? You might get a high-level academic who could also give you names.
I’ve used ProfNet at PR Newswire several times, and when it works, it’s great. (Have to stress the timeline heavily when you submit a request for sources there.)
Have you tried calling one of the schools that does this directly and asking to talk to a teacher or admin? They may may make you u-turn to a district communications/PR office, but if you stress that you’re on a short schedule and you’d really like to include them in the story, sometimes that can grease the wheels.
Thanks Tracy! I’m using ProfNet is a last resort just because I think it’s easier to troll. Right now I’m wandering around Facebook & LinkedIn finding folks who are connected to schools mentioned in the newspaper and hitting them up through those systems. Tomorrow I’ll try calling directly.
If you resubmit the query, I’ll be happy to issue it as a “priority” alert in the next edition. Hate to hear my service didn’t work for someone.
-Peter Shankman
Oh kind Peter! You’re not responsible for every single reporter who submits!! But seriously, thanks for the offer and thanks for your service — just ‘cuz it didn’t work this time doesn’t mean it won’t the next!
I forwarded your LinkedIN request. Any luck?
[...] a higher ratio of folks who maybe don’t quite know what they’re doing. That was fine. I posted about it here and Peter came on by and commented offering to send out the post again. That was nice and I really [...]