Public Education, Urban Renewal

Education Post-No Child Left Behind (1:03) Guest: Vernon Henshaw, PhD, Retired Superintendent of the Alpine  School District in Utah and Adjunct Faculty in the McKay School of Education at Brigham Young University; Suzanne Bolingbroke, Director of Literacy for the Alpine School District; Suzanne Parker, Literacy and Instructional Coach in the Provo School District  An era ended in mid-December when Congress passed—and the President signed—a law called The Every Student Succeeds Act. It replaces the No Child Left Behind Act, which was enacted in 2002 and for more than a decade would come to define, and to some defile, America’s system of educating its youth. We are looking back at the legacy of No Child Left Behind—the good and the bad—and ahead to what might come under The Every Student Succeeds Act.  Urban Parks (51:37) Guest: Ryan Gravel, Atlanta-based Urban Planner and Author of “Where We Want to Live”; Soren Simonsen, Visiting Professor of Urban Design at the University of Utah; Jamin Rowan, PhD, English Professor at BYU  The Center for Disease Control says “nearly half of youth live in neighborhoods without parks or playgrounds, community centers, and walking paths or sidewalks.”  Most of us live in cities built for cars. So, when communities decide they want more green places for walking and recreating—as is happening in cities across the country—the question is where do we put it? Big empty fields are hard to come by in most urban centers.  What cities do have is abandoned infrastructure—old gasworks, viaducts, and rail lines.  Using a hefty dose of creativity, urban planners around the country are taking these cast-offs from the industrial age and turning them back into greenspace. It’s like recycling land for a new use. But these aren’t your typical parks. And they’re often tied-in with other kinds of development like housing, transit or retail.