Bill Gates Annual Letter: Excellence in Teaching
Nagesh Telange
To improve education, Bill advocates for innovation and online tools. In this excerpt from his 2011 letter as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill also calls for rewarding great teachers and helping good ones become great.
In the United States, the foundation’s biggest investments
are in education. Only a third of students are graduating from high
school prepared to succeed at college-level work, and even fewer are
going on to get a degree that will help them compete for a good job. No
one should feel comfortable with those results.
Davis Guggenheim’s amazing and popular movie “Waiting for Superman” made
a powerful argument against the status quo. It showed a broad audience
that schools with the right approach can succeed, even with inner city
students that typical schools do not educate well. As more people
understand the gap between what is possible and what is actually
happening in most schools, I believe the momentum for reform will grow.
Since 1980 U.S. government spending per K-12 student increased by 73
percent, which is 20 percent faster than the rest of the economy. Over
that time our achievement levels were basically flat, while other
countries caught up. A recent analysis by the Programme for
International Student Assessment (PISA) showed the United States is
about average (compared to 35 developed countries) in science and
reading and below average in math. Many Americans have a hard time
believing this data, since we are so used to being the global leader in
educational achievement and since we spend a lot more money on education
than many other countries.
PISA measured educational achievement in the Shanghai area of China, and
even allowing for the fact that Shanghai is one of the most advanced
parts of China, the scores relative to the United States and other
countries were quite stunning. China did better in math, science, and
reading than any of the 65 countries it was compared to, and it achieved
these results with an average class size of more than 35 students. One
of the impressive things about the Chinese system is how teachers are
measured according to their ability. There are four levels of
proficiency in the Chinese system, and to move up a level, teachers have
to demonstrate their excellence in front of a panel of reviewers.
According to the PISA analysis,
two key things differentiate the U.S. education system from most other
countries’ systems. The first is that non-U.S. students are in school
for more hours, and the second is that U.S. school systems do very
little to measure, invest in, and reward teacher excellence.
Most people who become teachers do so because they’re passionate about
kids. It’s astonishing what great teachers can do for their students.
But the remarkable thing about great teachers today is that in most
cases nobody taught them how to be great. They figured it out on their
own. That’s why our foundation is investing to help devise measurement
and support systems to help good teachers become great teachers.
Our project to learn what the best teachers do—and how to share this
information with other teachers—is making significant progress. With the
help of local union affiliates, we have learned a lot already. We’re
learning that listening to students can be an important element in the
feedback system. In classes where students agree that “Our class stays
busy and doesn’t waste time” or that “In this class, we learn a lot
almost every day,” there tend to be bigger achievement gains.
Another great tool is taking a video showing both the teacher and the
students and asking evaluators to provide feedback. Melinda and I spent
several days visiting schools in Tennessee this fall and sat with
teachers who were watching videos of themselves teaching. We heard from a
number of them how they had already improved by seeing when students
were losing interest and analyzing the reasons.
Ultimately, the goal is to gather high-quality feedback from multiple
sources—test scores, student surveys, videos, principals, and fellow
teachers—so that teachers know how to improve. I think it is clear that a
system can be designed that teachers agree is fair, has modest
overhead, and rewards the teachers who are doing the most for their
students.
State budgets, the biggest part of K-12 funding, will be challenged in
the years ahead because of the economic downturn, the liabilities from
early retirement and pension commitments, and increasing medical costs. I
recently gave a speech
to the chief state school officers about how they might need to find
money to reward excellent teaching by shifting some away from things
like payment for seniority or advanced degrees that do not correlate
with improved teaching.
I am very enthusiastic about the potential of innovation to help solve
many of the problems with our education system. Melinda and I were
impressed when we visited the Tennessee Technology Center in Nashville,
an institution that provides young adults with technical training and
certificates. It gets significantly better results than its peer
institutions—graduating 71 percent of its students—because it focuses on
teaching job skills that are in high demand and is oriented around
meeting the needs of students who are juggling school with work and
family. Sometimes something as simple as rethinking the times when
classes are scheduled makes a huge difference for students.
The foundation is funding the development of online tools to help both
K-12 and college students learn. Pioneers like Sal Khan are already
showing how effective online tools can be. His website http://www.khanacademy.org
continues to grow its library of 2,000 short instructional videos on
topics from basic arithmetic to complicated subjects like biology and
physics. The videos are a tremendous resource for students of any age.
Sal’s vision for how technology can improve learning is broader than
just videos. With support from the foundation, he’s been able to expand
his site to include online exercises that diagnose weak spots, pointing
you to additional material to fill the gaps in your knowledge. Also,
Khan Academy is creating an online “dashboard” to help teachers use the
site as part of their curriculum. The dashboard tells the teacher how
each student is doing, pinpoints where they’re having trouble, and
suggests explanations and exercises to help.
Although it is clear that online learning works for strongly motivated
students, we need to learn how to blend classroom learning and online
learning, particularly for younger and less-prepared students. As these
projects develop and we start to answer many of these questions, I
believe technology will let us dramatically improve education despite
the budget constraints.
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Thanks & Regards ,
Nagesh P Telange
Maximo Technical Consultant,
Envision Enterprise Solutions Pvt Ltd.
308&309, TOPAZ, Amrutha Hills, Punjagutta, Hyderabad INDIA 500082
Phone:+91 40 65343853
Email: nage...@envisionesl.com
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