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