A politician is coming to Georgetown! And no, this time it isn’t one of those drop-ins from the Vice President that we’ve gotten so accustomed to. Instead, as the opening speaker for the U.S./India Higher Education Summit, which takes place at Georgetown on Thursday, October 13, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be speaking in Gaston.

The purpose of the summit, according to its website, is to “provide a platform for government and education leaders from both countries” to discuss their ideas about education and plans for its betterment with a “broad cross-section” of audience members, including academics, administrators, and NGO executives. Other notable speakers Indian Minister of Human Resources Kapil Sibal, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and Indian Ambassador to the United States Nirupama Rao, who spoke on campus in September. Ribal will be joining Clinton in making the Summit’s opening remarks.

Rao isn’t the only one of the summit’s speakers who is familiar to the Hilltop. Clinton two years ago to discuss Obama’s human rights agenda, and Duncan was here in May 2010 to discuss the role of parents in education.

After Clinton and Ribal’s opening ceremonies, the summit will continue throughout the day, with events including a roundtable and plenary session in Gaston Hall, and a speaker’s luncheon on Healy Lawn. Duncan will make the closing remarks, again joined by Ribal, in Gaston at 5:00 p.m.

For those who can’t make it out of bed and to Healy at the appropriate time—which we’re sure is going to be very, very early—the summit’s events will be broadcast online from Georgetown’s webcast site.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan spoke in Copley Formal Lounge this morning about the administration’s agenda for improving public school systems across the nation in an address to the Second Annual Mom Congress on Education and Learning.

Duncan’s speech emphasized the value of parental engagement in reforming local school systems.  Reviewing some of the highlight achievements of the administration thus far, Duncan noted the revision and simplification of the FAFSA financial aid form for higher education.

Duncan also provided a concrete view of the administration’s main goals to increase the number of students pursuing higher education, and increase student participation in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) fields.

The phrase “budget cuts” was a common theme of Duncan’s, both during his address and the question and answer session. 

Duncan did not hesitate to stress that while the administration can influence federal policy, most local concerns about how funding is allocated is a concern of the state governments.

He encouraged the representatives of the Mom Congress to push for more transparency in school budget reports. As far as funding is concerned, Duncan said his priority now is making the way schools allocate funding more efficient.

On Monday morning, Georgetown welcomed another member of Barack Obama’s cabinet to Gaston Hall—Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. Secretary Duncan’s visit, sponsored by the School of Continuing Studies and Parenting Magazine, focused on engaging parents in their children’s education.

After opening with a pithy compliment directed toward the University (“I feel smarter every time I come to Georgetown,”) Duncan dove into a keynote address and town hall discussion that  focused on the parents’ roles in education.

For a political figure, Secretary Duncan was surprisingly candid. He claimed to be envious of some other countries’ educational problems, for example. Compared to a country such as South Korea, which considers its most difficult educational problem to be parents who are too demanding, the United States simply lags behind. Stateside, Duncan noted, complacency runs rampant among many American parents.

Duncan often referenced the idea that parents too often “[look] out the window rather than in the mirror.”

Instead, he encouraged parents to see the flaws within both other schools and their childrens’ schools.

Duncan then told the audience that we can no longer “[create] schools that are good enough for someone else’s children, but not good enough for our own.”

While wrapping up his address, Duncan also took a few swipes at the prevalence of technology in our society. He cited studies that have found that children spend six hours a day watching television, while spending a mere 25 minutes reading per day.

Citing a predecessor in the Department of Education, Duncan offered eight magical words to education reform: “Please shut off the TV, I’m trying to read.” (Editor’s note: That’s right, the Secretary of Education counted incorrectly.)

Duncan concluded with a short question-and-answer period consisting of parent activists asking questions ranging from accountability issues to the healthiness of school food.

The recorded webcast of the town hall can be found here.

As anyone who has ever applied for financial aid knows, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid is not exactly user-friendly. With up to 153 questions, FAFSA is a confusing inconvenience for families that are financially literate and a huge stumbling block to claiming Federal aid for families that aren’t (a study by the American Council on Education showed that in the there are approximately 1.5 million students who are eligible for Pell grants but didn’t apply).

The FAFSA’s strangling effect on financial aid applications could be coming to an end, though. Yesterday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced the Obama administration’s plans for simplifying the FAFSA process.

Twenty percent of the questions will be eliminated (mostly removing redundancies) and the number of web pages you’ll have to go through to complete the form will be cut in half. They are also looking into a way to allow families to automatically fill in the information they’ve already submitted to the IRS.

The changes should be made in time for the next round of FAFSA applications in January 2010.