Washington — Education Secretary Arne Duncan told private-college officials here this morning that he was “extraordinarily focused” on increasing student aid and argued that putting money into education through the stimulus bill now moving through Congress was “the best thing we can do long-term” to shore up the nation’s economy.

In a speech at the annual meeting of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, Mr. Duncan lauded the resources devoted to students, schools, and colleges in the economic-stimulus legislation and cited the adage that one should “never waste a great crisis.”

“The best thing we can do is educate our way to a better economy,” he said.

On other topics, Mr. Duncan said the federal student-aid application form should be simplified in the short term and then overhauled in the long. And he said that too many high-school graduates were not ready for college-level work, calling that problem “a national crisis.”

He said he and others in the Obama administration planned to use their “bully pulpit” to challenge parents to do more to improve their children’s education, such as by reading to them more often and turning off the television.

He concluded by saying that the nation had an “economic imperative” to better educate its people, a challenge that he called “a civil-rights issue of our generation.” —Sara Hebel