>>> John Matlock <[log in to unmask]> 3/22/2007 5:08 AM >>> Spellings Introduces 'Fafsa4caster' to Give Students Earlier Data on Federal-Aid Eligibility By LAUREN SMITH Washington Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings announced on Wednesday a new online tool that will help students and their families better financially plan for college before a student's senior year of high school. The "Fafsa4caster," as the tool is called, will calculate a student's eligibility for federal student aid, including Pell Grants and subsidized loans. Using the new tool will also reduce the time it takes to complete the online Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or Fafsa, when students are actually ready to apply for aid. Information will be transferred from the forecaster to the larger form to pre-populate about half of its 100-plus questions. The Fafsa is the basic application form used by the federal and state governments and most colleges to determine eligibility for financial aid, and reducing its complexity is a long-sought goal. In a conference call with reporters on Wednesday morning, Ms. Spellings stressed the new tool's value for families and high-school students as they plan how they will pay for college. "It's important that we help families do that much earlier than their senior year," the secretary said. "They need to start looking at this in their junior year and even before." The federal Commission on the Future of Higher Education, which reported to Ms. Spellings last September, found a "crying need" to provide families with federal student-aid information quicker, she said, and the Fafsa4caster is the department's first step toward dealing with that issue. The Fafsa4caster "will be used by millions of students and families, and it's an important step forward," Ms. Spellings said. The program will forecast the amount of federal assistance a student qualifies for, but not state aid. A later version, set to be released in September, will provide case examples of what potential total-aid packages and eligibility would look like at various postsecondary institutions. Non-Web-based alternatives for collecting information for the Fafsa for students and families without access to the Internet are also being explored. Those include a "tele-Fafsa" pilot program in which students can call an 800 number and have a customer-service representative from the Education Department enter their information over the phone. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, commended Secretary Spellings for developing the Fafsa4caster. "This tool appears to be a good first step," Mr. Kennedy said in a written statement, "but we should do even more to simplify the Fafsa as much as possible and make the student-aid application process easier for students and families." Secretary Spellings mirrored that sentiment. "While this is an important first step, this is not the only step," she said. "We have a financial-aid process that is confusing and can be improved, and more-comprehensive reform is also in order." In a similar drive to facilitate the Fafsa, on Tuesday, members of both the House of Representatives and the Senate introduced bills that would allow students to file a "pre-Fafsa" during their junior year, and cut the number of questions on the Fafsa form in half by using financial information from income-tax returns (The Chronicle, March 21). The Fafsa4caster will be available April 1, and a Spanish version will be available April 29. -- JOHN MATLOCK, ([log in to unmask]) Associate Vice-Provost Office of the Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Director, Office of Academic Multicultural Initiatives The University of Michigan 3009 SAB Building Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1316 Phone: (734) 936-1055 Fax: (734) 764-3595 For scheduling: contact Carol Williams ([log in to unmask])