A strong panel of business people got together last week as part of the preparations for the upcoming Iowa Education Summit, and they focused on the K-12 portion of our school system.

Bankers Trust Co. CEO Suku Radia stated his strong support for year-round schooling. He grew up in Africa with a British educational system and attended school 48 weeks of the year.

“A good goal would be a 100 percent high school graduation rate,” he said, “with every graduate workforce-ready or college-ready.”

John Bloomhall, CEO of Diamond V Mills Inc. in Cedar Rapids, said it’s vital to work with children at a young age, encouraging them to think about where they’re headed. “I don’t think it’s mandatory that everybody get a college degree,” he said. “They need to love what they’re doing.”

Rockwell Collins Inc. CEO Clayton Jones pointed out that students “are not going to be entrepreneurial because of a textbook, but because of experiences, many of them social. Put students in groups with diverse thoughts so they’re exposed to something new.”

Paul Schickler, president of Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc., noted the essentials of managing employees: “Designing the job so expectations are clear; rewarding the employee appropriately; a development plan tailored to the individual. These are applied in business and can be applied to education,” he said.

All in all, they provided evidence that there can be much more useful interaction between the business community and education.

We’re leery of the notion that schools should always teach specifically what corporations tell them to; there’s more to learning about the world than that. Still, we owe our children an education that’s practical, not just fact-filled.

Leaders such as these could be a valuable resource for schoolchildren. The first lesson: If you want to succeed like they did, listen to what they’ve learned.