I wrote a letter week talking about the work of the foundation, sharing some of problems. And Warren Buffet had recommended I do that — being honest about what going well, what wasn’t, and making it kind of an annual thing. A goal I there was to draw more people in to work those problems, because I think there are some very problems that don’t get worked on naturally. That is, the market not drive the scientists, the communicators, the thinkers, the to do the right things. And only by paying attention these things and having brilliant people who care and draw other people in can we as much progress as we need to.
So this morning I’m going to two of these problems and talk about where they stand. But I dive into those I want to admit that I an optimist. Any tough problem, I think it can solved. And part of the reason I feel that way looking at the past. Over the past century, average has more than doubled. Another statistic, perhaps my favorite, is look at childhood deaths. As recently as 1960, 110 children were born, and 20 million of those died before age of five. Five years ago, 135 million children were — 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 lives matters a lot.
And the key reason we able to it was not only rising incomes but also a key breakthroughs: vaccines that were used more widely. For example, measles was million of the deaths back as recently as 1990 and now is 400,000. So we really can make changes. The next is to cut that 10 million in half again. I think that’s doable in well under 20 years. Why? Well there’s a few diseases that account for the vast majority those deaths: diarrhea, pneumonia and malaria.
So that brings us to the first problem I’ll raise this morning, which is how do we stop a deadly that’s spread by mosquitos?
Well, what’s the history of this disease? It’s a severe disease for thousands of years. In fact, if we look at the code, it’s the only disease we can see that people who lived in actually evolved several things to avoid malarial deaths. Deaths actually peaked at bit over five million in the 1930s. So it was absolutely gigantic. And the disease was 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 figured out that it was mosquitos. So it was everywhere. two tools helped bring the death rate down. One was killing the mosquitos with DDT. The was treating the patients with quinine, or quinine derivatives. so that’s why the death rate did come down.
Now, ironically, what was it was eliminated from all the temperate zones, which is where the rich are. So we can see: 1900, it’s everywhere. 1945, it’s most places. 1970, the U.S. and most of Europe gotten rid of it. 1990, you’ve gotten most of northern areas. And more recently you can see it’s around the equator.
And so this leads to the that because the disease is only in the poorer countries, it doesn’t get investment. For example, there’s more money put into baldness drugs are put into malaria. Now, baldness, it’s a terrible thing. (Laughter) And rich men are afflicted. so that’s why that priority has been set.
But, — even the million deaths a year caused by greatly understate its impact. Over 200 million people at one time are suffering from it. It means that you can’t get economies in these areas going because it just holds back so much. Now, malaria is of course transmitted mosquitos. I brought some here, just so you could experience this. We’ll let those roam around the a little bit. (Laughter) There’s no reason only poor people have the experience. (Laughter) (Applause) Those mosquitos are not infected.
So we’ve come up a few new things. We’ve got bed nets. And bed nets are a great tool. What means is the mother and child stay under the bed at night, so the mosquitos that bite late at night can’t get at them. And when use indoor spraying with DDT and those nets you can cut deaths over 50 percent. And that’s happened now in a number countries. It’s great to see.
But we have to careful because malaria — the parasite evolves and the mosquito evolves. every tool that we’ve ever had in the past has eventually ineffective. And so you end up with two choices. If you go into country with the right tools and the right way, you do it vigorously, you can actually get 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 reduce the disease burden, but eventually those tools become ineffective, and the death rate will soar back up again. the world has gone through this where it paid attention then didn’t pay attention.
Now we’re on the upswing. net funding is up. There’s new drug discovery going on. Our foundation backed a vaccine that’s going into phase three trial that starts in 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 map. Because the road map to get rid of disease involves many things. It involves communicators to keep funding high, to keep the visibility high, to tell the success stories. It social scientists, so we know how to get not just 70 percent of the people use the bed nets, but 90 percent. We need mathematicians to come and simulate this, to do Monte Carlo things to understand how these tools combine and 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 able eradicate malaria.
Now let me turn to a second question, fairly different question, but I’d say equally important. And this is: do you make a teacher great? It seems like the kind of question that people spend a lot of time on, and 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. We all a wonderful education. That’s part 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, teaching system has worked fairly well. There are fairly effective in a narrow set of places. So the top 20 percent of students 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, the for those top 20 percent is starting to fade on a relative basis, 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 the economy, it really is only providing opportunities now to with a better education. And we have to change this. We have to change so that people have equal opportunity. We have to change it that the country is strong and stays at the forefront of things that are driven by advanced education, science and mathematics.
When I first learned the statistics, was pretty stunned at how bad things are. Over 30 of kids never finish high school. And that had been covered up for a long because 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 place before that. They had to raise the stated dropout rate as soon as tracking was 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 a college 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 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. A lot of things had a good effect. But the more we looked it, the more we realized that having great teachers was very key thing. And we hooked up with some people studying much variation is there between teachers, between, say, the top quartile — very best — and the bottom quartile. How much variation is there within a school between schools? And the answer is that these variations are unbelievable. A top quartile teacher will increase the performance of their class — based on scores — by over 10 percent in a single year. does that mean? That means that if the entire U.S., two years, had top quartile teachers, the entire difference between us Asia would go away. Within four years we would be blowing everyone in world away.
So, it’s simple. All you 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 skill to other people.” But I tell you that absolutely is not happening today.
What are the characteristics of this top quartile? What they look like? You might think these must be senior teachers. And the answer is no. Once somebody has for three years their teaching quality does not change thereafter. The variation 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 different factors and says how much do they explain quality. That bottom thing, which says there’s no effect at all, is master’s degree.
Now, the way the pay system works is there’s two things that rewarded. One is seniority. Because your pay goes up and you vest into pension. The 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 your past performance. There are some people are very good at this. And we’ve done almost nothing to study that is and to draw it in and to replicate it, raise the average capability — or to encourage the people with to stay in the system.
You might say, “Do the 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 places — very few — where great teachers are 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, some 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 whole spirit and attitude in schools is very 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 engaged in making better.
When you actually go and sit in one of these classrooms, at first it’s very bizarre. I 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 going on?” And the teacher was constantly to see which kids weren’t paying attention, which kids were bored, calling kids rapidly, putting things up on the board. It was a very dynamic environment, because particularly those middle school years — fifth through eighth grade — people engaged and setting the tone that everybody in the classroom needs to attention, nobody gets to make fun of it or have the position of the kid 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. The data isn’t gathered. In the teacher’s contract, it limit the number of times the principal can come into the classroom — sometimes to per year. And they need advanced notice to do that. imagine running a factory where you’ve got these workers, some of them just making crap and the management told, “Hey, you can only come down here once a year, but you to let us know, because we might actually fool you, and try and do a job in that one brief moment.”
Even a teacher who wants to improve doesn’t have the tools to it. They don’t have the test 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 data not be made available and used in the tenure for the teachers. And so that’s sort of working in the opposite direction. But I’m about this, I think there are some clear things we can do.
First all, there’s a lot more testing going on, and that’s us the picture of where we are. And that allows to understand who’s doing it well, and call them out, and out what those techniques are. Of course, digital video is now. Putting a few cameras in the classroom and saying things are being recorded on an ongoing basis is very in all public schools. And so every few weeks could sit down and say, “OK, here’s a little clip of something I I did well. Here’s a little clip of something think I did poorly. Advise me — when this kid acted up, how I have dealt with that?” And they could all sit and work together on those problems. You can the very best teachers and kind of annotate it, have it so everyone sees is the very best at teaching this stuff.
You can take those great and make them available so that a kid could go and watch the physics course, learn from that. If have a kid who’s behind, you would know you could assign them that to watch and review the concept. And in fact, these free could not only be available just on the Internet, but you could make it so DVDs were always available, and so anybody who has access a DVD player can have the very best teachers. And so by of this as a personnel system, we can do it much better.
Now there’s a actually, about KIPP — the place that this is going — that Jay Matthews, a news reporter, wrote — called, “Work Hard, Be Nice.” And I thought it 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, we put a of money into education, and I really think that education is the most thing to get right for the country to have as strong a as it should have. In fact we have in the bill — it’s interesting — the House version actually money in it for these data systems, and it was out in the Senate because there are people who are threatened by these things.
But — I’m optimistic. I think people are beginning to recognize how important this is, and it really can a difference for millions of lives, if we get right. I only had time to frame those two problems. There’s a lot more like that — AIDS, pneumonia — I can just you’re getting excited, just at the very name of these things. And the skill sets required to tackle things are very broad. You know, the system doesn’t naturally 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 with solutions. And with that, I think there’s some great things will come out of it.
Thank you. (Applause)