Items from Bill Gate' first annual letter

Bill Gates at the suggestion of Warren Buffet, has written his first Annual letter for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In the letter he passes on some goals, where progress has been made, and some things the Foundation has learned in the last year. Here are some things I learned and thought to pass along.

• Reducing the under 5 mortality rate actually reduces population growth. Parents chose to have enough kids to give them a high chance that several will survive to support them as they grow old. As the number of kids who survive to adulthood goes up, parents can achieve this goal without having as many children. When health improves, people have smaller families and the government has more resources per person, so improving nutrition and education becomes much easier. These investments also improve health, and the virtuous cycle begins that takes a country out of poverty.

• In many poor countries, most farmers are women.

• I like their point " Technology is only useful if it helps people improve their lives, not as an end in itself.

• Only 71% of kids graduate from high schoo lin 4 years.

• Many of the small schools where the foundation invested did not improve students' acheivement in any significant way. These tended to be schools that did not take the radical steps to change the culture, such as allowing principals to pick the team of teachers or change the curriculum. We had less success trying to change an existing school than helping to create a new school.
  

• Research shows that there is only half as much variation in student acheivement between schools as there is among classrooms in the same school. If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school.