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