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On This Date: Ashley Bowl was a cool place to be in 1947

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Reading & Northern’s Lehigh Gorge train trips returning to Jim Thorpe

Bad news, coal crackers: A new ranking of 150 metro areas in the nation says we&rsquo;re not particularly well-educated.
				The consolation: We comfortably avoided the ignominy of being in the bottom 10, coming in at number 124.
				That&rsquo;s better than Reading, which at number 132 was the lowest-ranked Pennsylvania Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) on the list. But it&rsquo;s a far cry from the Pittsburgh MSA, ranking 39th. Strictly speaking, Philadelphia was the highest ranking in the state at 35, but that MSA actually covers parts of three other states: New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland.
				Well, OK, technically a bit of Pennsylvania (Pike County, according to a 2010 state map of MSAs) falls under the domain of the New York/Newark/Jersey City MSA, which ranks higher, at 26.
				The rankings were done by wallethub.com, a website that bills itself as &ldquo;dedicated to helping people efficiently attain top WalletFitness so they may enjoy life instead of worrying about money.&rdquo;
				They looked at things like education attainment (percent 25 and older in the MSA with college degrees) public school and institutions of higher education quality, summer learning opportunities and more. All told there were 11 &ldquo;metrics&rdquo; broken down into two categories, &ldquo;educational attainment&rdquo; and &ldquo;quality of education and attainment gap.&rdquo;
				The local MSA, which covers Scranton, Wilkes-Barre and Hazleton, didn&rsquo;t do well in either, ranking 122nd in attainment and 135th in quality of education.
				If you want to live where the smart folk gather, the Ann Arbor MSA in Michigan is the place to move, ranking number one in both overall categories. So, go Wolverines?
				And the least-educated MSA in the country? Visalia-Porterville, California. If you know the way to San Jose, go there and head southeast about three hours to reach Visalia (Porterville&rsquo;s about 30 miles further southeast).
				Complete rankings are online at <a href="https://wallethub.com/edu/e/most-and-least-educated-cities/6656/#methodology" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">wallethub.com</a>.

Wilkes-Barre/Scranton area does poorly in ranking of ‘most educated cities’