I wrote letter last week talking about the work of the foundation, sharing some the problems. And Warren Buffet had recommended I do — being honest about what was going well, what wasn’t, and it kind of an annual thing. A goal I had there to draw more people in to work on those problems, because I think there are some very important that don’t get worked on naturally. That is, the does not drive the scientists, the communicators, the thinkers, governments to do the right things. And only by paying attention to these things having brilliant people who care and draw other people in can make as much progress as we need to.
So this morning I’m to share two of these problems and talk about they stand. But before I dive into those I want to admit I am an optimist. Any tough problem, I think it can be solved. And of the reason I feel that way is looking at the past. Over the century, average lifespan has more than doubled. Another statistic, my favorite, is to look at childhood deaths. As recently 1960, 110 million children were born, and 20 million those died before the age of five. Five years ago, 135 million children born — so, more — and less than 10 million of died before the age of five. So that’s a factor of two reduction of the death rate. It’s a phenomenal thing. Each one of those matters a lot.
And the key reason we were able it was not only rising incomes but also a few breakthroughs: vaccines that were used more widely. For example, measles four million of the deaths back as recently as 1990 and is under 400,000. So we really can make changes. The breakthrough is to cut that 10 million in half again. And I think that’s in well under 20 years. Why? Well there’s only a few diseases that for the vast majority of those deaths: diarrhea, pneumonia malaria.
So that brings us to the first problem that I’ll raise this morning, which how do we stop a deadly disease that’s spread mosquitos?
Well, what’s the history of this disease? It’s been severe disease for thousands of years. In fact, if we at the genetic code, it’s the only disease we see that people who lived in Africa actually evolved things to avoid malarial deaths. Deaths actually peaked at a bit over million in the 1930s. So it was absolutely gigantic. And the disease was over the world. A terrible disease. It was in the United States. was in Europe. People didn’t know what caused it until the early 1900s, when British military man figured out that it was mosquitos. it was everywhere. And two tools helped bring the death rate down. One was the mosquitos with DDT. The other was treating the with quinine, or quinine derivatives. And so that’s why death rate did come down.
Now, ironically, what happened was was eliminated from all the temperate zones, which is where the rich countries are. we can see: 1900, it’s everywhere. 1945, it’s still most places. 1970, the U.S. and most of have gotten rid of it. 1990, you’ve gotten most of the northern areas. And more recently you can it’s just around the equator.
And so this leads to the paradox that because the is only in the poorer countries, it doesn’t get much investment. For example, there’s more money put baldness drugs than are put into malaria. Now, baldness, it’s a terrible thing. (Laughter) rich men are afflicted. And so that’s why that priority has been set.
But, malaria — the million deaths a year caused by malaria greatly understate its impact. 200 million people at any one time are suffering from it. It that you can’t get the economies in these areas going because it holds things back so much. Now, malaria is of transmitted by mosquitos. I brought some here, just so could experience this. We’ll let those roam around the a little bit. (Laughter) There’s no reason only poor should have the experience. (Laughter) (Applause) Those mosquitos are not infected.
So we’ve come with a few new things. We’ve got bed nets. And bed nets a great tool. What it means is the mother child stay under the bed net at night, so the mosquitos bite late at night can’t get at them. And when you use spraying with DDT and those nets you can cut deaths over 50 percent. And that’s happened now in a of countries. It’s great to see.
But we have to be careful because malaria — parasite evolves and the mosquito evolves. So every tool we’ve ever had in the past has eventually become ineffective. And so you end up with choices. If you go into a country with the right tools and the right way, do it vigorously, you can actually get a local eradication. And that’s where we the malaria map shrinking. Or, if you go in kind of half-heartedly, for period of time you’ll reduce the disease burden, but eventually those tools will ineffective, and the death rate will soar back up again. And the world has gone this where it paid attention and then didn’t pay attention.
Now we’re the upswing. Bed net funding is up. There’s new discovery going on. Our foundation has backed a vaccine that’s into phase three trial that starts in a couple months. And should save over two thirds of the lives if it’s effective. So we’re to have these new tools.
But that alone doesn’t give the road map. Because the road map to get rid this disease involves many things. It involves communicators to the funding high, to keep the visibility high, to the success stories. It involves social scientists, so we know how to not just 70 percent of the people to use bed nets, but 90 percent. We need mathematicians to come in and simulate this, do Monte Carlo things to understand how these tools combine and work together. Of course we need drug to give us their expertise. We need rich-world governments to very generous in providing aid for these things. And so as these elements come together, I’m optimistic that we will be able to eradicate malaria.
Now let me to a second question, a fairly different question, but I’d say equally important. And this is: How do you a teacher great? It seems like the kind of that people would spend a lot of time on, we’d understand very well. And the answer is, really, that don’t. Let’s start with why this is important. Well, of us here, I’ll bet, had some great teachers. all had a wonderful education. That’s part of the we’re here today, part of the reason we’re successful. I can say that, even though I’m college drop-out. I had great teachers.
In fact, in the United States, the system has worked fairly well. There are fairly effective teachers in a narrow set places. So the top 20 percent of students have gotten a good education. And those top 20 have been the best in the world, if you them against the other top 20 percent. And they’ve on to create the revolutions in software and biotechnology and keep the U.S. at the forefront.
Now, strength for those top 20 percent is starting to fade on a relative basis, even more concerning is the education that the balance people are getting. Not only has that been weak. it’s weaker. And if you look at the economy, it is only providing opportunities now to people with a better education. we have to change this. We have to change it so people have equal opportunity. We have to change it so that the country is and stays at the forefront of things that are by advanced education, like science and mathematics.
When I first learned the statistics, I was pretty at how bad things are. Over 30 percent of kids never finish high school. And that been covered up for a long time because they always took the dropout rate the number who started in senior year and compared it to the number who senior year. Because they weren’t tracking where the kids were before that. But of the dropouts had taken place before that. They to raise the stated dropout rate as soon as tracking was done to over 30 percent. For minority kids, it’s over 50 percent. And even you graduate from high school, if you’re low-income, you have less than a 25 percent chance ever completing a college degree. If you’re low-income in the States, you have a higher chance of going to jail than you do getting a four-year degree. And that doesn’t seem entirely fair.
So, how you make education better?
Now, our foundation, for the nine years, has invested in this. There’s many people working on it. We’ve worked on schools, we’ve funded scholarships, we’ve done things in libraries. A lot of things had a good effect. But the more we looked at it, the more we realized having great teachers was the very key thing. And we hooked up some people studying how much variation is there between teachers, between, say, top quartile — the very best — and the bottom quartile. How much variation is there within a or between schools? And the answer is that these variations are absolutely unbelievable. A top teacher will increase the performance of their class — based on test scores — by 10 percent in a single year. What does that mean? That means that if entire U.S., for two years, had top quartile teachers, the entire difference between us Asia would go away. Within four years we would blowing everyone in the world away.
So, it’s simple. All need are those top quartile teachers. And so you’d say, “Wow, should reward those people. We should retain those people. should find out what they’re doing and transfer that to other people.” But I can tell you that is not happening today.
What are the characteristics of this top quartile? What do they like? You might think these must be very senior teachers. And the answer no. Once somebody has taught for three years their teaching quality does change thereafter. The variation is very, very small. You might think these people with master’s degrees. They’ve gone back and they’ve gotten Master’s of Education. This chart takes four different factors says how much do they explain teaching quality. That bottom thing, which there’s no effect at all, is a master’s degree.
Now, the way the pay system is there’s two things that are rewarded. One is seniority. Because your pay goes up and vest into your pension. The second is giving extra money to people get their master’s degree. But it in no way is with being a better teacher. Teach for America: slight effect. For math majoring in math there’s a measurable effect. But, overwhelmingly, it’s your past performance. There some people who are very good at this. And we’ve done almost nothing to study what that and to draw it in and to replicate it, to raise the average capability — or encourage the people with it to stay in the system.
You say, “Do the good teachers stay and the bad teacher’s leave?” The answer is, average, the slightly better teachers leave the system. And it’s system with very high turnover.
Now, there are a few places — very few — where teachers are being made. A good example of one is a set of schools called KIPP. KIPP means Knowledge Is Power. It’s unbelievable thing. They have 66 schools — mostly middle schools, high schools — and what goes on is great teaching. They take poorest kids, and over 96 percent of their high school graduates go four-year colleges. And the whole spirit and attitude in those schools is very than in the normal public schools. They’re team teaching. They’re constantly improving their teachers. They’re taking data, test scores, and saying to a teacher, “Hey, you caused this of increase.” They’re deeply engaged in making teaching better.
When you actually go and sit one of these classrooms, at first it’s very bizarre. I sat down and thought, “What is going on?” The teacher was running around, and the energy level was high. thought, “I’m in the sports rally or something. What’s on?” And the teacher was constantly scanning to see which weren’t paying attention, which kids were bored, and calling rapidly, putting things up on the board. It was a very dynamic environment, because in those middle school years — fifth through eighth — keeping people engaged and setting the tone that in the classroom needs to pay attention, nobody gets to make of it or have the position of the kid who doesn’t want be there. Everybody needs to be involved. And so KIPP is doing it.
How does compare to a normal school? Well, in a normal school, teachers aren’t told how good they are. The isn’t gathered. In the teacher’s contract, it will limit the number times the principal can come into the classroom — to once per year. And they need advanced notice do that. So imagine running a factory where you’ve got these workers, some of them just making crap the management is told, “Hey, you can only come down here once a year, but need to let us know, because we might actually you, and try and do a good job in one brief moment.”
Even a teacher who wants to improve doesn’t have the to do it. They don’t have the test scores, there’s a whole thing of trying to block the data. For example, New York passed law that said that the teacher improvement data could not be available and used in the tenure decision for the teachers. And so that’s sort of working the opposite direction. But I’m optimistic about this, I think there are some clear things we do.
First of all, there’s a lot more testing on, and that’s given us the picture of where are. And that allows us to understand who’s doing it well, call them out, and find out what those techniques are. Of course, digital is cheap now. Putting a few cameras in the classroom and saying that things being recorded on an ongoing basis is very practical in all public schools. And every few weeks teachers could sit down and say, “OK, here’s a little clip of something thought I did well. Here’s a little clip of I think I did poorly. Advise me — when this kid acted up, how should I have with that?” And they could all sit and work on those problems. You can take the very best teachers and kind annotate it, have it so everyone sees who is very best at teaching this stuff.
You can take those courses and make them available so that a kid go out and watch the physics course, learn from that. If you have kid who’s behind, you would know you could assign them that video watch and review the concept. And in fact, these free courses could not be available just on the Internet, but you could make it so that were always available, and so anybody who has access to a DVD player have the very best teachers. And so by thinking this as a personnel system, we can do it better.
Now there’s a book actually, about KIPP — place that this is going on — that Jay Matthews, a reporter, wrote — called, “Work Hard, Be Nice.” And thought it was so fantastic. It gave you a sense what a good teacher does. I’m going to send here a free copy of this book. (Applause)
Now, we put a lot of into education, and I really think that education is the important thing to get right for the country to as strong a future as it should have. In fact we have the stimulus bill — it’s interesting — the House version had money in it for these data systems, and it taken out in the Senate because there are people who threatened by these things.
But I — I’m optimistic. I people are beginning to recognize how important this is, and it really make a difference for millions of lives, if we get it right. I only had time to those two problems. There’s a lot more problems like that — AIDS, pneumonia — I can just you’re getting excited, just at the very name of things. And the skill sets required to tackle these things are very broad. You know, the system doesn’t make it happen. Governments don’t naturally pick these things in right way. The private sector doesn’t naturally put its resources into these things.
So it’s going take brilliant people like you to study these things, other people involved — and you’re helping to come up with solutions. And with that, I think there’s great things that will come out of it.
Thank you. (Applause)