U of M hosts breakfast roundtable on K-12 education accountability

(ABC 6 News) – The University of Minnesota hosted a forum on accountability in education in Rochester Monday morning.

Educational leaders spoke on Federal rules and regulations pertaining to students K through 12. The current system identifies the lowest performing schools before reviewing how they can be provided with support for improvement.

“Today we also talked about what kind of information would be helpful in that,” said Dr. Michael Rodriguez, University of Minnesota’s Dean of College of Education and Human Development. “So we know that there are other dispositions that students develop; self awareness, social awareness, teamwork, communication, all of these others things that are not necessarily in the state standards that are reflected in the state test score. So there’s a big belief in them and I think people reconfirmed that today.”

The forum featured a panel of educational leadership from throughout the state.

The event was moderated by Katie Pekel, the Executive Director of Educational Leadership in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota.

Attendees included RPS superintendent Kent Pekel, as well as the commissioner of Minnesota’s Department of Education, Willie Jett.

Correction: A previous version of this story failed to properly identify Katie Pekel. She served as the moderator of the event and is the Executive Director of Educational Leadership in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota. The version that aired in the 5 p.m. broadcast misidentified Pekel as the commissioner of Minnesota’s Department of Education.