I a letter last week talking about the work of the foundation, sharing some the problems. And Warren Buffet had recommended I do that — honest about what was going 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 are very important problems that don’t get worked on naturally. That is, market 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 and draw other people in we make as much progress as we need to.
So this I’m going to share two of these problems and about where they stand. But before I dive into those I to admit that I am an optimist. Any tough problem, I think it can solved. And part of the reason I feel that way is at the past. Over the past century, average lifespan has than doubled. Another statistic, perhaps my favorite, is to look at deaths. As recently as 1960, 110 million children were born, and 20 million those died before the age of five. Five years ago, 135 children were born — so, more — and less 10 million of them died before the age of five. So that’s a factor of reduction of the childhood death rate. It’s a phenomenal thing. Each one of those 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 four million the deaths back as recently as 1990 and now under 400,000. So we really can make changes. The next breakthrough is to cut that 10 in half again. And I think that’s doable in well 20 years. Why? Well there’s only a few diseases that account for the majority of those deaths: diarrhea, pneumonia and malaria.
So that us to the first problem that I’ll raise this morning, which is how do we a deadly disease that’s spread by mosquitos?
Well, what’s the history this disease? It’s been a severe disease for thousands of years. In fact, we look at the genetic code, it’s the only disease can see that people who lived in Africa actually evolved several things avoid malarial deaths. Deaths actually peaked at a bit over five million in the 1930s. it was absolutely gigantic. And the disease was all 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 mosquitos. So it was everywhere. And two tools helped bring the rate down. One was killing the mosquitos with DDT. The was treating the patients with quinine, or quinine derivatives. And so that’s why the rate did come down.
Now, ironically, what happened was was eliminated from all the temperate zones, which is the rich countries are. So we can see: 1900, it’s everywhere. 1945, it’s still places. 1970, the U.S. and most of Europe have rid of it. 1990, you’ve gotten most of the areas. And more recently you can see it’s just around equator.
And so this leads to the paradox that because the is only in the poorer countries, it doesn’t get investment. For example, there’s more money put into baldness than are put into malaria. Now, baldness, it’s a thing. (Laughter) And rich men are afflicted. And so that’s why that priority been set.
But, malaria — even the million deaths a year caused malaria greatly understate its impact. Over 200 million people at any one time suffering from it. It means that you can’t get the economies in these going because it just holds things back so much. Now, is of course transmitted by mosquitos. I brought some here, so you could experience this. We’ll let those roam around auditorium a little bit. (Laughter) There’s no reason only poor people should have the experience. (Laughter) (Applause) Those are not infected.
So we’ve come up with a 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 that bite 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 be careful because malaria — the parasite evolves and mosquito evolves. So every tool that we’ve ever had the past has eventually become ineffective. And so you end with two choices. If you go into a country with the right tools the right way, you do it vigorously, you can actually a local eradication. And that’s where we saw the malaria map shrinking. Or, if you in kind of half-heartedly, for a period of time you’ll the disease burden, but eventually those tools will become ineffective, and the death will soar back up again. And the world has gone through this where it attention and then didn’t pay attention.
Now we’re on upswing. Bed net funding is up. There’s new drug going on. Our foundation has backed a vaccine that’s going 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 us the road map. the road map to get rid of this disease involves many things. It involves communicators to keep funding high, to keep the visibility high, to tell the success stories. It involves social scientists, so we how to get not just 70 percent of the people to use the 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 we need companies to give us their expertise. We need rich-world to be very generous in providing aid for these things. so as these elements come together, I’m quite optimistic that we be able to eradicate malaria.
Now let me turn to a question, a fairly different question, but I’d say equally important. this is: How do you make a teacher great? It like the kind of question that people would spend a lot time on, and we’d understand very well. And the is, really, that we don’t. Let’s start with why this is important. Well, all of here, I’ll bet, had some great teachers. We all a wonderful education. That’s part of the reason we’re today, part of the reason we’re successful. I can say that, even though I’m a college drop-out. I great teachers.
In fact, in the United States, the system has worked fairly well. There are fairly effective in a narrow set of places. So the top 20 percent of students have a good education. And those top 20 percent have been the best in world, if you measure them against the other top 20 percent. they’ve gone on to create the revolutions in software and biotechnology and keep U.S. at the forefront.
Now, the strength for those 20 percent is starting to fade on a relative basis, even more concerning 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 this. We have to change it so that people equal opportunity. We have to change it so that the is strong and stays at the forefront of things that are driven by advanced education, science and mathematics.
When I first learned the statistics, I was pretty stunned how bad things are. Over 30 percent of kids never finish high school. And had been covered up for a long time because always took the dropout rate as the number who in senior year and compared it to the number who finished senior year. 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 that tracking done to over 30 percent. For minority kids, it’s 50 percent. And even if you graduate from high school, if you’re low-income, have less than a 25 percent chance of ever completing a degree. If you’re low-income in the United States, you have a higher chance of going to jail you do of getting a four-year degree. And that doesn’t seem entirely fair.
So, how do make education better?
Now, our foundation, for the last nine years, has in this. There’s many people working on it. We’ve worked on small schools, we’ve scholarships, we’ve done things in libraries. A lot of these things a good effect. But the more we looked at it, more we realized that having great teachers was the very key thing. And we up with some people studying how much variation is between teachers, between, say, the top quartile — the very best — and the bottom quartile. How variation is there within a school or between schools? And the answer is that these are absolutely unbelievable. A top quartile teacher will increase the 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, entire difference between us and Asia would go away. four years we would be 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. We should out what they’re doing and transfer that skill to people.” But I can tell you that absolutely is not today.
What are the characteristics of this top quartile? What do they look like? You might these must be very senior teachers. And the answer is no. Once somebody taught for three years their teaching quality does not change thereafter. The is very, very small. You might think these are people with master’s degrees. They’ve gone back they’ve gotten their Master’s of Education. This chart takes four different and says how much do they explain teaching quality. That bottom thing, which says there’s effect at all, is a master’s degree.
Now, the the pay system works is there’s two things that are rewarded. One seniority. Because your pay goes up and you vest into pension. The second is giving extra money to people get their master’s degree. But it in no way associated with being a better teacher. Teach 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 and to draw it in and to replicate it, to raise the average — or to encourage the people with it to stay in system.
You might say, “Do the good teachers stay the bad teacher’s leave?” The answer is, on average, slightly better teachers leave the system. And it’s a system with very high turnover.
Now, there a few places — very few — where great teachers are being made. A example of one is a set of charter schools called KIPP. KIPP means Knowledge Power. It’s an unbelievable thing. They have 66 schools — middle schools, some high schools — and 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 the whole spirit attitude in those schools is very different than in the 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 actually go and sit in one of these classrooms, first it’s very bizarre. I sat down and I thought, “What is going on?” The 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 kids weren’t paying attention, which kids were bored, and calling kids rapidly, things up on the board. It was a very dynamic environment, because particularly in those middle school — fifth through eighth grade — keeping people engaged and setting the tone that everybody the classroom needs to pay attention, nobody gets to make fun of it or the position of the kid who doesn’t want to be there. Everybody needs to be involved. And so is doing 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 the number of times the principal can come into classroom — sometimes to once per year. And they need advanced notice do that. So imagine running a factory where you’ve these workers, some of them just making crap and the is told, “Hey, you can only come down here once year, but you need to let us know, because we might actually fool you, and try and 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 the data. For example, New York passed a law that said that the improvement data could not be made available and used in the decision for the teachers. And so that’s sort of working in the opposite direction. But I’m optimistic this, I think there are some clear things we can do.
First of all, there’s a more testing going on, and that’s given us the of where we are. And that allows us to understand who’s doing it well, and them out, and find out what those techniques are. Of course, digital is cheap now. Putting a few cameras in the and saying that things are being recorded on an ongoing basis is very practical all public schools. And so every few weeks teachers could sit down say, “OK, here’s a little clip of something I thought I did well. Here’s little clip of something I think I did poorly. me — when this kid acted up, how should I have with that?” And they could all sit and work together on those problems. can take the very best teachers and kind of annotate it, have so everyone sees who is the very best at teaching this stuff.
You can those great courses and make them available so that a kid 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 video to watch and review the concept. in fact, these free courses could not only be available just on Internet, but you could make it so that DVDs were always available, and anybody who has access to a DVD player can the very best teachers. And so by thinking of as a personnel system, we can do it much better.
Now there’s a book actually, about KIPP — the place that is 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 of what a good does. I’m going to send everyone here a free of this book. (Applause)
Now, we put a lot money into education, and I really think that education the most important thing to get right for the to have as strong a future as it should have. In we have in the stimulus bill — it’s interesting — the version actually had money in it for these data systems, and it was taken out in Senate because there are people who are threatened by these things.
But I — I’m optimistic. think people are beginning to recognize how important this is, and it really can make a difference for millions lives, if we get it right. I only had time to frame those problems. There’s a lot more problems like that — AIDS, pneumonia — I just see you’re getting excited, just at the very name of these things. And the sets required to tackle these things are very broad. You know, the system doesn’t naturally it happen. Governments don’t naturally pick these things in the way. The private sector doesn’t naturally put its resources into things.
So it’s going to take brilliant people like you to study these things, get people involved — and you’re helping to come up with solutions. And with that, think there’s some great things that will come out it.
Thank you. (Applause)