Mosquitos malaria and education Bill Gates

I wrote a letter last week talking about

the work of the foundation sharing some

of the problems and Warren Buffett had

recommended I do that being honest about

what was going well what wasn’t and

making it kind of an annual thing a goal

I had There was to draw more people in

to work on those problems because I

think there are some very important

problems that don’t get worked on

naturally that is the market does not

drive the scientists the communicators

the thinkers the government’s to do the

right things and only by paying

attention to these things and having

brilliant people who care and draw their

people in can we make as much progress

as we need to so this morning I’m going

to share two of these problems and talk

about where they stand but before I dive

into those I want to admit that I am an

optimist any top problem I think it it

can be solved and part of the reason I

feel that way is looking at the past

over the last century average lifespan

has more than doubled another statistic

perhaps my favorite is to look at

childhood deaths as recently as nineteen

sixty 110 million children were born and

20 million of those died before the age

of five five years ago a hundred and

thirty five million children were born

so more and less than 10 million of them

died before the age of five so that’s a

factor of two reduction in the child to

death rate it’s a phenomenal things I

mean each one of those lives matters a

lot and the key reason we were able to

do it was not only rising incomes but

also a few key breakthroughs vaccines

that were used more widely

for example measles was 4 million of the

deaths back as recently as 1990 and now

is under 400,000 so we really can make

changes the next breakthrough is to cut

that 10 mm

in half again and I think that’s doable

in well under 20 years why well there’s

only a few diseases that account for the

vast majority of those deaths diarrhea

pneumonia and malaria and so that brings

us to the the first problem that all all

raised this morning which is how do we

stop a disease a deadly disease that’s

spread by mosquitoes what’s the history

of 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 we can see the people who

lived in Africa actually evolved several

things to avoid malarial deaths that’s

actually peaked at a bit over five

million in the 1930s so it was

absolutely gigantic and the disease was

all over the world terrible disease it

was in the United States it was in

Europe people didn’t know what caused it

until the early 1900s when a British

military man figured out that it was

mosquitoes so it was everywhere

and two tools helped bring the death

breakdown one was killing the mosquitoes

with DDT and the other was treating the

patients with quinine or quinine

derivatives and so that’s why the death

rate did come down now ironically what

happened was it was eliminated from all

the temperate zones which is where all

the rich countries are so we can see

1900s everywhere 1945 still most places

1970 the US and most of Europe have

gotten rid of it 1990 you’ve gotten more

Stu northern areas and then more

recently you can see it’s just around

the equator and so this leads to the

paradox that because the disease is only

in the poor countries it doesn’t get

much investment for example there’s more

money put into baldness drugs than are

put into malaria now baldness is it’s

terrible

and rich men are afflicted and so that’s

why that priority has been set but

malaria they even the million deaths a

year caused by malaria greatly

understate its impact over 200 million

people at any one time are suffering

from it means that you can’t get the

economies in these areas going because

there’s just it holds things back so

much now malaria of course transmitted

by mosquitoes I brought some here so you

could experience this we’ll let let

those roam around the auditorium a

little bit there

there’s no reason only poor people

should have have the experience

not those mosquitoes are not not

infected but so we’ve come up with a few

new things we’ve got bed nets and bed

nets are a great tool what it means is

the mother and child stay under the bed

net at night and so the mosquitoes that

bite late at night I can’t get at them

and when you use indoor spraying with

DDT and those nets you can cut deaths by

over 50% and that’s happened now in a

number of countries it’s great to see

but we have to be careful because

malaria the parasite evolves and the

mosquito evolves so every tool that

we’ve ever had in the past has

eventually become ineffective and so you

end up with two choices if you go into a

country with the right tools in the

right way and you do it vigorously you

can actually get a local eradication and

that’s where we saw the malaria map

shrinking or if you go in kind of

half-heartedly for a period of time

you’ll reduce the disease burden but

eventually those tools will become

ineffective and the death rate will soar

back up again

and the world has gone through this

where it paid attention and then didn’t

pay attention now we’re on the upswing

bed net funding is up there’s new drug

discovery going on our foundation is

back to vaccine that’s going into phase

three trial that starts in a couple

months and that should save over

two-thirds of lives if it’s effective

and so we’re going to have these new

tools but that alone doesn’t give us the

roadmap because the roadmap to get rid

of this disease involves many things it

involves communicators to keep the

funding high to keep the visibility high

to tell the success stories it involves

social scientists so we know how to get

not just 70% of people to use the bed

nets but 90% we need mathematicians to

come in and simulate this to monte-carlo

things to understand how these tools

combine and work together

of course we need drug companies to give

us their expertise we need rich world

governments to be very generous in in

providing aid for these things and so as

these elements come together I’m quite

optimistic that we will be able to

eradicate malaria well now let me turn

to a second question a fairly different

question but I’d say equally important

and this is how do you make a teacher

great now seems like the kind of

question that people would spend a lot

of time on and that we’d understand very

well

and the answer is really that we don’t

let’s start with why this is important

well all of us here all bat had some

great teachers we all had a wonderful

education that’s part of the reason

we’re here today part of the reason

we’re successful I can say that even

though I’m a college dropout I had great

teachers and in fact in the United

States the teaching system has worked

fairly well there are fairly effective

teachers in a narrow set of places so

the top 20 percent of students have

gotten a good education and those top 20

percent have been the best in the world

if you measure them against the other

top twenty percent and they’ve gone on

to create the revolutions in software

and biotechnology and keep the u.s. at

the forefront now the strength for those

top 20 percent is starting to fade on a

relative basis but even more concerning

is the education that the balance of

people are getting not only is that been

weak it’s getting weaker and if you look

at the economy it really is only

providing opportunities now to people

with a better education and so we have

to change this we have to change it so

that people have equal opportunity we

have to change it so that the country is

strong and stays in the forefront of

things that are driven by advanced

education like Science and Mathematics

when I first learned the statistics I

was pretty

how bad things are over 30% of kids

never finish high school and that had

been covered up for a long time because

they always took the dropout rate is the

number who started in senior year and

and then compared it to the number of

the finished senior year because they

were tracking where the kids were before

that but most of the dropouts had taken

place before that so they had to raise

the state of dropout rate as soon as

that tracking was done to over 30

percent for minority kids it’s over 50

percent and even if you graduate 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 have

a higher chance of going to jail than

you do of getting a four-year degree and

that you know doesn’t seem entirely fair

so how do you make education better our

foundation for the last nine years is

invested in this there’s many people

working on it we’ve worked on small

schools we funded scholarships we’ve

done things in libraries a lot of these

things had a good effect but the more we

looked at it the more we realized that

having great teachers was the very key

thing and so we hooked up with some

people studying how much variation is

there between teachers between say the

top quartile the very best and the

bottom quartile how much variation is

there within a school or between schools

and the answer is that these variations

are absolutely unbelievable a top

quartile teacher will increase the

performance of their class based on test

scores by over 10% in a single year what

does that mean well that means that the

entire us for two years had top quartile

teachers the entire difference between

US and Asia

would go away and within four years we

would be blowing everyone in the world

away so it’s simple all you need is

those top quartile teachers

and so you’d say well wow that’s good we

should reward those people we should

retain those people we should find out

what they’re doing and transfer that

skill to other people but I can tell you

that absolutely is not happening today

what are the characteristics of this top

quartile what do they they look like you

might think well these must be very

senior teachers and the answer is no

once somebody is taught for three years

their teaching quality does not change

thereafter the variation is very very

small you might think well these are

people with master’s degrees they’ve

gone back and they’ve gotten their

masters education

this chart takes four different factors

and says how much do they explain

teaching quality that bottom thing which

says there’s no effect at all is a

master’s degree now the way the P system

works is there’s two things are rewarded

one is seniority because your pay goes

up and you vest in your pension and the

second is giving extra money to people

who get their master’s degree but in no

ways associated with being a better

teacher Teach for America slight effect

for math teachers majoring in math is a

measurable effect but overwhelmingly

it’s your past performance there are

some people who are very good at this

and we’ve done almost nothing to study

what that is and to draw it in to to

replicate it to raise the average

capability or to encourage the people

with it to stay in the system you might

say we’ll do the good teachers stay in

the bad teachers leave the answer is on

average the slightly better teachers

leave the system and it’s a system with

very high turnover now there are a few

places very few where great teachers are

being made a good example of one is a

set of charter schools called Kip Kip

means knowledge is power

it’s an unbelievable thing they have 66

schools mostly middle schools seven high

schools

and what goes on is great teaching they

take the poorest kids and over 96% of

their high school graduates go to

four-year colleges and the whole spirit

and attitude in those schools is very

different than in the normal public

school they’re team-teaching they’re

constantly improving their teachers

they’re taking data the test scores and

saying to a teacher hey you caused this

amount of increase and so they’re deeply

engaged in making teaching better when

you actually go in and sit in one of

these classrooms at first it’s very

bizarre i sat down and I thought what is

going on the teacher was running around

and the entered light energy levels high

I thought well I’m in the prep the the

sports rally or something what’s going

on and the teacher was constantly

scanning to see which kids weren’t

paying attention which kids were bored

and calling on kids rapidly putting

things up on the board it was a very

dynamic environment because particularly

in those middle school years two through

eighth grade keeping people engaged and

setting the tone that everybody in the

classroom needs to pay attention nobody

gets make fun of it or have the position

of you know the kid who who doesn’t want

to be there everybody needs to be

involved and so Kipp is doing it how

does that compare to a normal school

within a normal school teachers aren’t

told how good they are the data isn’t

gathered in the teachers contract it

will limit the number of times the

principal can come into the classroom

sometimes two once per year and they

need advance notice to do that so

imagine running a factory we’ve got

these workers some of them just making

crap and the management is told hey you

can only come down here once a year but

you need to let us know because we might

actually do fool you and try and do a

good job in that one brief moment even a

teacher wants to improve doesn’t have

the tools to do it they don’t have the

test scores and there’s a whole thing of

trying to block the data for example New

York passed a law that said that the

teacher improvement data could not be

made available and used in the tenure to

say

for the teachers and so that’s sort of

working in the opposite directions but

I’m optimistic about this I think

there’s some clear things we can do

first of all there’s a lot more testing

going on and that’s given us the picture

of where we are and that allows us to

understand who’s doing it well and call

them out and find out what those

techniques are of course digital video

is cheap now putting a few cameras in

the classroom and saying that things are

are being recorded on an ongoing basis

it is very practical in all public

schools and so every few weeks teachers

could sit down and say okay here’s a

little clip of something I thought I did

well here’s a little clip of something I

think I did poorly advise me when this

kid acted up how should I have dealt

with that and they can all sit and work

together on those problems you can take

the very best teachers and kind of

annotate it have it so everyone sees who

is the very best teaching the stuff you

can take those great courses and make

them available so that a kid could go

out and watch the physics course learn

from that if you have a kid who’s behind

you would know you could assign them

that video to watch and review the

concept and in fact these three courses

could not only be available just on the

internet but you could make it so that

DVDs were always available and so

anybody who has access to a DVD player

can have the very best teachers and so

by thinking of this is a a personnel

system we can do it much better there’s

a book actually about hip the place that

this is going on the Jay Matthews a news

reporter wrote called

work hard be nice and I thought it was

so fantastic give you a sense of what a

good teacher does I’m going to send

everyone here a free copy of this book

now we put a lot of money into education

and I really think that education is the

most important thing to get right for

the country to have as strong a futurist

should have fact we have in the stimulus

bill it’s interesting the House version

actually had money in it for these data

systems and was taken out in the Senate

because they’re there people are

threatened by these things but I am

optimistic I think people are beginning

to recognize how important this is and

it really can make a difference for

millions of lives if we get it right

well I only had time to pray those two

problems there’s a lot more problems

like that aids pneumonia and just see

you’re getting excited just at the very

name of these things and the skill sets

required to tackle these things are very

broad you know the system doesn’t

naturally make it happen

governments don’t naturally pick these

things in the right way the private

sector doesn’t naturally put its

resources into these things so it’s

going to take brilliant people like you

to study these things get other people

involved and you’re helping to come up

with solutions and with that I think

there’s some great things will come out

of it thank you

you