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