I wrote a letter last talking about the work of the foundation, sharing some of the problems. And Warren Buffet recommended I do that — being honest about what going well, what wasn’t, and making it kind of an annual thing. A goal I had there to draw more 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 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 can 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 I want to admit that I am an optimist. tough problem, I think it can be solved. And part of reason I feel that way is looking at the past. Over the past century, average lifespan more than doubled. Another statistic, perhaps my favorite, is to look 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 — so, more — and less than 10 million of them before the age of five. So that’s a factor of two reduction of 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 rising but also a few key breakthroughs: vaccines that were used more widely. For example, measles was million of the deaths back as recently as 1990 and now is under 400,000. So we really make changes. The next breakthrough is to cut that 10 in half again. And I think that’s doable in under 20 years. Why? Well there’s only a few diseases that for the vast majority of those deaths: diarrhea, pneumonia and malaria.
So that brings us to first problem that I’ll raise this morning, which is how do we stop deadly disease that’s spread by mosquitos?
Well, what’s the history of disease? It’s been a severe disease for thousands of years. In fact, if we look at genetic code, it’s the only disease we can see that people who lived in Africa actually several things to avoid malarial deaths. Deaths actually peaked at a bit over five 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 caused it until early 1900s, when a British military man figured out that it mosquitos. So it was everywhere. And two tools helped bring the death rate down. One was the mosquitos with DDT. The other was treating the patients with quinine, or quinine derivatives. And that’s why the death rate did come down.
Now, ironically, what happened was it was eliminated from all temperate zones, which is where the rich countries are. So we 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. more recently you can see it’s just around the equator.
And so this leads the paradox that because the disease is only in the poorer countries, it doesn’t get much investment. 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. so that’s why that priority has been set.
But, malaria — even the million deaths a year by malaria greatly understate its impact. Over 200 million people at any one time are suffering it. It means that you can’t get the economies in these areas because it just holds things back so much. Now, malaria of course transmitted by mosquitos. I brought some here, just so you experience this. We’ll let those roam around the auditorium a little bit. (Laughter) There’s no only poor people should have the experience. (Laughter) (Applause) mosquitos are not infected.
So we’ve come up with few new things. We’ve got bed nets. And bed nets a great tool. What it means is the mother and child stay under the bed net night, so the mosquitos that bite late at night can’t get at them. when you use indoor spraying with DDT and those nets can cut deaths by over 50 percent. And that’s happened in a number of countries. It’s great to see.
But we to be careful because malaria — the parasite evolves the mosquito evolves. So every tool that we’ve ever in the 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 can actually a local eradication. And 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 disease burden, but eventually those will become ineffective, and the death rate will soar up again. And the world has gone through this where paid attention and then didn’t pay attention.
Now we’re the upswing. Bed net funding is up. There’s new discovery going on. Our foundation has backed a vaccine that’s going into three trial that starts in a couple months. And that should save over two of the lives if it’s effective. So we’re going to these new tools.
But that alone doesn’t give us the road map. Because road map to get rid of this disease involves things. It involves communicators to keep the funding high, to keep the visibility high, to the success stories. It involves social scientists, so we how to get not just 70 percent of the to 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 companies to give us their expertise. We need rich-world to be very generous in providing aid for these things. And so these elements come together, I’m quite optimistic that we be able to eradicate malaria.
Now let me turn a second question, a fairly different question, but I’d equally important. And this is: How do you make teacher great? It seems like the kind of question that people spend a lot of time on, and we’d understand well. And the answer is, really, that we don’t. Let’s start with why this important. Well, all of us here, I’ll bet, had some great teachers. We all had a 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 college drop-out. I had teachers.
In fact, in the United States, the teaching system has worked fairly well. There are fairly teachers in a narrow set of places. So the top 20 percent students have gotten a good education. And those top 20 percent been the best in the world, if you measure against the other top 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 top 20 percent is starting to fade on a basis, but even more concerning is the education that the of people are getting. Not only has that been weak. it’s getting weaker. if you look at the economy, it really is providing opportunities now to people with a better education. we have to change this. We have to change so that people have equal opportunity. We have to it so 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, was pretty stunned at how bad things are. Over 30 of kids never finish high school. And that had been covered up for a time because they always took the dropout rate as the number who started in senior year compared it to the number who finished senior year. Because weren’t tracking where the kids were before that. But most of dropouts had taken place before that. They had to raise the stated dropout as soon as that tracking was done to over 30 percent. For kids, it’s over 50 percent. And even if you graduate from school, if you’re low-income, you have less than a 25 percent chance ever completing a college degree. If you’re low-income in the United States, have a higher chance of going to jail than do of getting a four-year degree. And that doesn’t seem fair.
So, how do you make education better?
Now, our foundation, for last nine years, has invested in this. There’s many people working on it. We’ve on small schools, we’ve funded scholarships, we’ve done things in libraries. A lot of these things a good effect. But the more we looked at it, the more realized that having great teachers was the very key thing. And hooked up with some people studying how much variation is there between teachers, between, say, top quartile — the very best — and the bottom quartile. How much variation is there within school 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 in a single year. What does that mean? That that if the entire U.S., for two years, had top teachers, the entire difference between us and Asia would go away. Within years we would be blowing everyone in the world away.
So, it’s simple. you need are those top quartile teachers. And so you’d say, “Wow, we should those people. We should retain those people. We should find out they’re doing and transfer that skill to other people.” But I can tell you absolutely is not happening today.
What are the characteristics this top quartile? What do they look like? You might think these be very senior teachers. And the answer is no. somebody has taught 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 four different factors and says how do they explain teaching quality. That bottom thing, which there’s no effect at all, is a master’s degree.
Now, the the pay system works is there’s two things that are rewarded. is seniority. Because your pay goes up and you vest into your pension. The second is extra money to people who get their master’s degree. But it in no is associated with being a better teacher. Teach for America: slight effect. For math majoring in math there’s a measurable effect. But, overwhelmingly, it’s your past performance. There are people who are very good at this. And we’ve done almost nothing to what that is and to draw it in and to it, to raise the average capability — 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, the slightly teachers leave the system. And it’s a system with very turnover.
Now, there are a few places — very few — where great teachers are being made. good example of one is a set of charter schools called KIPP. means Knowledge Is Power. It’s an unbelievable thing. They have 66 schools — middle schools, some high schools — and what goes on great teaching. They take the poorest kids, and over 96 percent their high school graduates go to four-year colleges. And the whole spirit and in those 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, saying to a teacher, “Hey, you caused this amount increase.” They’re deeply engaged in making teaching better.
When you actually and sit in one of these classrooms, at first it’s bizarre. I sat down and I thought, “What is on?” The teacher was running around, and the energy level high. I thought, “I’m in the sports rally or something. What’s going on?” the teacher was constantly scanning to see which kids weren’t paying attention, which kids bored, and calling kids rapidly, putting things up on board. It was a very dynamic environment, because particularly in those school years — fifth through eighth grade — keeping people engaged and setting the tone everybody in the classroom needs to pay attention, nobody to make fun of it or have the position the kid who doesn’t want to be there. Everybody needs to be involved. And so KIPP is it.
How does that compare to a normal school? Well, in a school, teachers aren’t told how good they are. The data isn’t gathered. In teacher’s contract, it will limit the number of times the principal can come into the — sometimes to 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 here once year, but you need to let us know, because might actually fool you, and try and do a job in that one brief moment.”
Even a teacher who wants to improve doesn’t the tools to do it. They don’t have the scores, and there’s a whole thing of trying to block the data. example, New York passed a law that said that teacher improvement data could not be made available and in the tenure decision for the teachers. And so that’s sort working in the opposite direction. But I’m optimistic about this, think there are some clear things we can do.
First all, there’s a lot more testing going on, and that’s given the picture of where we are. And that allows us to understand who’s doing well, and call them out, and find out what those techniques are. course, digital video is cheap now. Putting a few in the classroom and saying that things are being on an ongoing basis is very practical in all schools. And so every few weeks teachers could sit down and say, “OK, here’s a little clip of I thought I did well. Here’s a little clip of I think I did poorly. Advise me — when this kid up, how should I have dealt with that?” And they could all sit and work together 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 great and make them available so that a kid could out and watch the physics course, learn from that. If have a kid who’s behind, you would know you could assign them video to watch and review the concept. And in fact, these free courses could not only be available just the Internet, but you could make it so that DVDs were always available, and so anybody who access to a DVD player can have the very best teachers. so by thinking of this as a personnel system, we do it much better.
Now there’s a book actually, about KIPP — the place that this is going — that Jay Matthews, a news reporter, wrote — called, “Work Hard, Nice.” And I thought it was so fantastic. It you a sense of what a good teacher does. I’m going to send everyone here free copy of this book. (Applause)
Now, we put lot of money into education, and I really think education is the most important thing to get right for the country have as strong a future as it should have. In fact 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 things.
But I — I’m optimistic. I think people are 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 two problems. There’s a more problems like that — AIDS, pneumonia — I can just you’re getting excited, just at the very name of these things. And skill sets required to tackle these things are very broad. You know, system doesn’t naturally make it happen. Governments don’t naturally these things in the right way. The private sector doesn’t naturally put its resources these things.
So it’s going to take brilliant people you to study these things, get other people involved — and you’re to come up with solutions. And with that, I there’s some great things that will come out of it.
Thank you. (Applause)