2019's Top 20 Places to take Salt Lake City kids
View this email in your browser
Dear KidsOutAndAbout readers:
The people have spoken! Here are the 2019 Top 20 Places to Take Kids in the Salt Lake City area!
Voting closed June 16 in our annual survey of the Salt Lake City area's favorite places to take kids! Thank you so much to the thousands of you who voted during the past month! A few of the contests really came right down to the wire, and so last-minute voting was crucial.
This announcement provides the Top 10, with the category winners below. To find out who was ranked in position 11 through 20 as well as these Top 10, click here to see the entire 2019 list.
We are proud to celebrate everything that makes the Salt Lake area a great place to raise families!
Debra Ross
Publisher, KidsOutAndAbout.com
Category winners:
Inside fun: Boondock's Fun Center
Outside fun: Utah's Hogle Zoo
Amusement Park: Lagoon Amusement Park
Kid-friendly museum: Discovery Gateway
Performing Arts: CenterPoint Legacy Theatre
Kid-friendly farm: Wheeler Historic Farm
Sports team: Utah Jazz
Nature Center: Red Butte Garden
Arts Education: CenterPoint Academy
Sports Education: South Davis Recreation Center
Top 10 of the Top 20 winners:
3. Tracy Aviary
4. Loveland Living Planet Aquarium
8. Natural History Museum of Utah
9. Cherry Hill
10. Treehouse Children's Museum
So what comes next? Click here to see all 20 of the Top 20 Places to Take Kids in and around Salt Lake City. And then create a summer bucket list that will really make memories!
The 74
By: Patricia Levesque, CEO of ExcelinEd & Matt Sigelman, CEO of Burning Glass Technologies
“Career readiness” has become the policymakers’ buzzword of the 21st century. States offer a wide range of career and technical education programs and credentials intended to prepare students for success. But how effective — and relevant — are these programs and the credentials that students are earning?
New research from ExcelinEd and Burning Glass Technologies shows that just half of all states collect the necessary data to know how aligned their credentials programs are with employer demand. And states have a long way to go to align the credentials high school students are earning with actual workforce needs.
Credentials Matter is a first-of-its-kind analysis of how the credentials that students earn are aligned with the skills that employers need by comparing state data on attainment with labor market demand based on job postings.
===========================
The Charter Revolution
No Images? Click here
A weekly report on education news and commentary you won’t find anywhere else — from the nation’s leading voice on education innovation and opportunity.
VIVA LAS VEGAS – AND CHARTER SCHOOLS. We’re in Las Vegas to participate in the annual National Charter Schools Conference. We haven’t seen Elvis – or the longtime heart throb of a particular CER associate – Ann Margret, but we are seeing several thousand charter advocates, teachers, parents, business executives and “just plain folks” who share our passion to provide innovation, choice and opportunity for all of America's kids. Great to be joining the grassroots of America along with superstars such as Sal Khan of Khan Academy, Hadi Partrovi of Code.Org, PitBull! and Nina Rees of the National Alliance For Public Charter Schools. The energy here is palpable, as all are united in not only defeating the current union onslaught against charters but also in continuing to expand the universe of options from K – career for everyone, regardless of zip code. Follow our continued coverage on twitter @EDREFORM and the Hashtag #NCSC19
HOW AND WHY THE CHARTER REVOLUTION STARTED. Time does indeed fly when you’re having fun, and while the 36 years since 1983’s seminal “A Nation At Risk” report jump started the charter school movement have not always been fun, they have always been rewarding. A quick history lesson can be had in CER’s inaugural R&E issue brief (That’s short for Research AND Experience) on the history and raison d’être of charter schools, appearing in one of the nation’s largest education related websites.
RUMOR OF CHARTERS’ DEATH IS GREATLY EXAGGERATED. There has been a blizzard of commentary recently about the attacks on charter schools and their possible demise as a result of the jihad being waged against them by some unions. With a hat tip to Mark Twain, we can report that the rumors of their death – or even ill health frankly - are greatly exaggerated. The movement for innovation, quality and choice in education is certainly under attack, but as the article points out charters’ vital signs are strong and in fact growing stronger when measured by growth and vitality of charters across the country.
SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER. Not long ago the above mentioned AFT’s Randi Weingarten was in West Virginia touting the state’s non-charter public schools and throwing snark at charters. Jeanne Allen sets the record straight with a column in the West Virginia Gazette.
SCHOOL DISTRICTS’ FINANCIAL PROBLEMS ARE SELF INFLICTED. The anti-charter mob has perfected the “big lie” technique of repeating a whopper long enough, hoping that repetition will have it eventually accepted as truth. One of these folks favorite canards is that charters “drain resources” from other public schools. That has been proven false many times, and is decisively refuted in a superb piece by Lance Izumi, Senior Director of Education Studies at the Pacific Research Institute. As Sergeant Friday used to say, “just the facts”.
STRIKE STRIKES THE STRIKERS. From the “ultimate role reversal” file comes this item about employees threatening to strike because of unhappiness with working conditions, paid family leave and diversity, among other grievances. What makes the job action notable is that the entity that might be struck is none other than the American Federation of Teachers, whose head honcho Randi Weingarten has been the ringleader in the recent wave of teachers’ strikes across the country. The strikers are using Weingarten’s own pro-strike rhetoric against her. A dictionary-perfect example of being hoisted on your own petard.
AN END TO RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY? We previously reported - and urged action in our first 100 Days paper in early 2016 (link) - about the importance of a legal challenge to the odious “Blaine Amendments” in THIRTY EIGHT states which prohibit parents from directing the flow of tax dollars allocated for their childrens’ education to a religious organization. The right of parents to do so was upheld by the Supreme Court in the landmark 2002 Zelman Decision, which concerned the “non-Blaine” state of Ohio. So it was great news that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case challenging the pernicious, deliberately anti-Catholic law in Montana. We have been tweeting and cheering on the parents’ stalwart efforts in getting SCOTUS to consider once and for all putting an end to these blatantly discriminatory statutes and will be doing that and more for months to come!
THIS JUST IN FROM PHILADELPHIA. A group of freedom lovers who wanted choice in their lives just issued a declaration, including these lines:
For a special treat go here to see and hear Kate Smith introduce “God Bless America” to the country in 1938. Sharp eyes might notice a future President has a cameo in the film clip.
Drop us a line, as always, please reach out with any input and suggestions.
Founded in 1993, the Center for Education Reform aims to expand educational opportunities that lead to improved economic outcomes for all Americans — particularly our youth — ensuring that conditions are ripe for innovation, freedom and flexibility throughout U.S. education.
============================
Dear Editor:
Please consider this succinct expert analysis by Asian specialist Dr. Mel Gurtov of the latest pomp by Trump, giving the worst violator of human rights on Earth a radical boost in his legitimacy with zero gain to show for it. For PeaceVoice, thank you,
Tom Hastings
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Trump-Kim III: Making history without making progress?
by Mel Gurtov
488 words
Taking a few steps onto North Korean soil, and posing for pictures with a friendly dictator, seem to fit Trump-era diplomacy better than a carefully laid out process. But unless the US changes its bargaining position—in fact, starts to bargain—nothing will be come of this sudden trip, and Trump will have given North Korea another PR victory: the US president accepting it as a nuclear state.
The media’s focus on Trump making history is strange, and a distraction from the main issue: peace and security on the Korean peninsula. Whereas Trump took a few steps inside North Korea, Jimmy Carter (in 1994) and Bill Clinton (in 2009) made peace missions to Pyongyang that had substantive results. The only real history Trump is making is his consistent adoration of dictators and substitution of nice personal exchanges for problem solving.
More noteworthy than Trump’s gambit is the NY Times report that Trump is considering a different tack with the North Koreans this time around, namely, a proposal for a freeze on the North’s nuclear weapon production (presumably meaning production of the materials for the weapon as well as the weapon itself). Critics are already jumping on that idea too, pointing out the obvious: North Korea would retain its nuclear weapon stockpile while continuing missile testing. The US is said to weigh proposing that in return, North Korea will agree to abandon perhaps two weapon production and testing sites under international inspection.
Granted, such a US proposal would mean acknowledging what no administration had been willing to acknowledge before: that North Korea is a legitimate nuclear-weapon state. Pro-nuclear forces in South Korea, Japan, and perhaps elsewhere (Saudi Arabia? Iran?) might be emboldened to insist on having the same privilege, raising all kinds of regional security and proliferation issues. And how likely is it that Kim Jong-un will agree to intrusive inspections of his nuclear facilities?
On the other hand, let’s face it: the demand of the last three administrations for “complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization” of North Korea is simply unattainable. So a nuclear freeze may be the best deal possible. (Among the few specialists who agree is Joel Wit, who has been involved in nuclear negotiations with North Korea.)
What follows that deal counts just as much. If it paves the way for further steps—for example, a permanent halt to North Korean missile tests in return for a partial easing of US sanctions, a peace treaty (including South Korea, China, and Japan) to replace the Korean armistice, and farther down the road a significant North Korean reduction in nuclear warheads in exchange for elimination of US sanctions and normalization of relations—the freeze would be a win for both countries.
Otherwise, Trump has gained very little—a freeze can quickly unfreeze, and nuclear production can be resumed or started elsewhere—in return for major North Korean gains in international recognition and continued possession of a substantial nuclear-missile arsenal.
--end--
Mel Gurtov, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Portland State University.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
