We can learn a lot about improving the 21st-century world from an icon of the industrial era: the steam engine.
让21世纪的世界变得更美好，我们可以从中大量借鉴的是工业化时代的标志：蒸汽机。
Harnessing steam power required many innovations, as William Rosen chronicles in the book 'The Most Powerful Idea in the World.' Among the most important were a new way to measure the energy output of engines and a micrometer dubbed the 'Lord Chancellor' that could gauge tiny distances.
正如威廉•罗森(William Rosen)在《世界上最强大的创意》(The Most Powerful Idea in the World)一书里所述，利用蒸汽动力需要诸多方面的革新，其中最重要的包括测量蒸汽机能量输出的新手段以及一种能够测量细微长度、被称之为“大法官”(Lord Chancello)的测微计。
Such measuring tools, Mr. Rosen writes, allowed inventors to see if their incremental design changes led to the improvements -- such as higher power and less coal consumption -- needed to build better engines. There's a larger lesson here: Without feedback from precise measurement, Mr. Rosen writes, invention is 'doomed to be rare and erratic.' With it, invention becomes 'commonplace.'
罗森写道，这些测量工具可以让发明者知道他们的增量设计变更是否能够带来性能的改进──比如更高的功率和更低的耗煤量──这都是制造更先进的蒸汽机所需要的。这儿有一条更重要的经验：按罗森的话来说，如果没有精密测量结果的反馈，发明“注定是寥寥无几、飘忽不定的”。有了它，发明变得“司空见惯”了。
In the past year, I have been struck by how important measurement is to improving the human condition. You can achieve incredible progress if you set a clear goal and find a measure that will drive progress toward that goal -- in a feedback loop similar to the one Mr. Rosen describes.
去年，我深深感受到量化措施对于改善人类状况有多么重要。如果你制订一个明确的目标并且找到一种能够朝着目标推进的计量手段──以类似于罗森描述的那种反馈环路的方式，你就可以取得不可思议的进步。
This may seem basic, but it is amazing how often it is not done and how hard it is to get right. Historically, foreign aid has been measured in terms of the total amount of money invested -- and during the Cold War, by whether a country stayed on our side -- but not by how well it performed in actually helping people. Closer to home, despite innovation in measuring teacher performance world-wide, more than 90% of educators in the U.S. still get zero feedback on how to improve.
这看上去似乎是基本的要求，但令人惊讶的是经常都没有做到，做对也非常困难。在历史上，外国援助是以投资的金钱总额来衡量的──而冷战期间，则以一个国家是否跟我们站在一边为衡量标准──不是以帮助人民的实际效果为标准的。说得更近一点，尽管全世界范围内衡量教师业绩的手段都进行了改革创新，但是美国90%以上的教育工作者没有得到如何改进的反馈信息。
An innovation -- whether it's a new vaccine or an improved seed -- can't have an impact unless it reaches the people who will benefit from it. We need innovations in measurement to find new, effective ways to deliver those tools and services to the clinics, family farms and classrooms that need them.
如果一项革新──无论是新疫苗还是改良的种子──不能触及未来受益的人群，它就无法产生影响。我们需要在量化手段方面创新，找到新的有效途径，将那些工具和服务交付到需要它们的诊所、家庭农场和教室。
I've found many examples of how measurement is making a difference over the past year -- from a school in Colorado to a health post in rural Ethiopia. Our foundation is supporting these efforts. But we and others need to do more. As budgets tighten for governments and foundations world-wide, we all need to take the lesson of the steam engine to heart and adapt it to solving the world's biggest problems.
在过去一年里，我已经发现了很多例子，证明量化有多么重要的作用──从科罗拉多的一所学校到埃塞俄比亚乡村的一个保健站。我们的基金会在支持这些活动，但我们、还有其他人需要做更多的努力。由于全球范围内政府和基金会的预算在收紧，我们所有的人需要认真从蒸汽机上借鉴经验，并用它来解决世界上最大的问题。
One of the greatest successes in terms of using measurement to drive global change has been an agreement signed in 2000 by the United Nations. The Millennium Development Goals, supported by 189 nations, set 2015 as a deadline for making specific percentage improvements across a set of crucial areas -- such as health, education and basic income. Many people assumed the pact would be filed away and forgotten like so many U.N. and government pronouncements. The decades before had brought many well-meaning declarations to combat problems from nutrition to human rights, but most lacked a road map for measuring progress. However, the Millennium goals were backed by a broad consensus, were clear and concrete, and brought focus to the highest priorities.
运用量化手段推动全球变革，在这一方面最成功的例子之一就是2000年联合国签署的一项协议。得到189个国家支持的《千年发展目标》(The Millennium Development Goals)将2015年定为在一系列重要领域──比如健康、教育和基本收入──实现具体百分比增长的最后期限。很多人认为这项协定会像诸多联合国及政府宣言一样被束之高阁、为人遗忘。之前的数十年人类发表了许多初衷良好的宣言，要应对从营养到人权的诸多问题，但大多数行动都缺乏衡量进展的路线图。不过，《千年发展目标》是达成广泛共识之后得到支持的，目标明确具体，突出了当务之急需要解决的问题。
When Ethiopia signed on to the Millennium goals in 2000, the country put hard numbers to its ambition to bring primary health care to all of its citizens. The concrete goal of reducing child mortality by two-thirds created a clear target by which to measure success or failure. Ethiopia's commitment attracted a surge of donor money toward improving the country's primary health-care services.
当埃塞俄比亚2000年同意签署《千年发展目标》的时候，该国对普及全民初级卫生保健的目标制订了硬性指标。将儿童死亡率降低三分之二的具体目标确立为一个可以衡量工作成败的清晰指标。埃塞尔比亚的承诺吸引了大量捐款，用于改善这个国家的初级卫生保健服务。
With help from the Indian state of Kerala, which had built a successful network of community health-care posts, Ethiopia launched its own program in 2004 and today has more than 15, 000 health posts staffed by 34, 000 workers. (This is one of the greatest benefits of measurement -- the ability it gives government leaders to make comparisons across countries and then learn from the best.)
在已成功建立了社区卫生保健站网络的印度喀拉拉邦(Kerala)的帮助之下，埃塞尔比亚2004年启动自己的计划，今天该国已经拥有15,000多个保健站，员工人数达到34,000人。（这就是量化的最大好处之一──它让政府领导有能力去与别的国家进行横向比较，然后向最先进的地方学习。）
Last March, I visited the Germana Gale Health Post in the Dalocha region of Ethiopia, where I saw charts of immunizations, malaria cases and other data plastered to its walls. This information goes into a system -- part paper-based and part computerized -- that helps government officials see where things are working and to take action in places where they aren't. In recent years, data from the field have helped the government respond more quickly to outbreaks of malaria and measles. Perhaps even more important, the government previously didn't have any official record of a child's birth or death in rural Ethiopia. It now tracks those metrics closely.
去年3月，我到访了埃塞俄比亚Dalocha地区的Germana Gale保健站。我在那里看到 上贴着免疫接种、疟疾病例的图表和其它数据。这些信息会纳入一个系统──部分纸质，部分电脑处理──帮助政府官员了解工作是否在取得进展并在没有进展的地方采取行动。近年来，来自保健站的数据帮助政府更加快速地对疟疾和麻疹的爆发做出反应。也许更重要的是，政府以前对埃塞俄比亚农村孩子的出生及死亡没有任何官方记录，现在却在严密跟踪这些指标了。
The health workers provide most services at the posts, though they also visit the homes of pregnant women and sick people. They ensure that each home has access to a bed net to protect the family from malaria, a pit toilet, first-aid training and other basic health and safety practices. All these interventions are quite simple, yet they've dramatically improved the lives of people in this country.
保健人员大多在保健站提供服务，不过他们也会到孕妇和病人的家里去。他们要确保每个家庭都有保护家人免患疟疾的蚊帐、有一个旱厕、获得过急救培训以及其它的基本卫生安全措施。所有这些干预措施都非常简单，但它们已经大大改善了该国人民的生活。
Consider the story of one young mother in Dalocha. Sebsebila Nassir was born in 1990, when about 20% of all children in Ethiopia did not survive to see their fifth birthdays. Two of Sebsebila's six siblings died as infants. But when a health post opened its doors in Dalocha, life started to change. Last year when Sebsebila became pregnant, she received regular checkups. On Nov. 28, Sebsebila traveled to a health center where a midwife was at her bedside during her seven-hour labor. Shortly after her daughter was born, a health worker gave the baby vaccines against polio and tuberculosis.
以Dalocha地区一个年轻妈妈的故事为例，赛布赛比拉•纳西尔(Sebsebila Nassir)生于1990年，那时埃塞俄比亚有大约20%的儿童活不到他们的五岁生日。赛布赛比拉的六个兄弟姐妹中有两个在婴儿时期就夭折了。可是当Dalocha地区开设了保健站以后，生活开始发生变化。赛布赛比拉去年怀孕的时候，她接受了定期的健康检查。11月28日，赛布赛比拉来到一个保健中心，在她七个小时的分娩过程中，一名助产士一直守候在她的床边。她女儿出生后不久，一名保健人员给宝宝注射了预防脊髓灰质炎和肺结核的疫苗。
According to Ethiopian custom, parents wait to name a baby because children often die in the first weeks of life. When Sebsebila's first daughter was born three years ago, she followed tradition and waited a month to bestow a name. This time, with more confidence in her new baby's chances of survival, Sebsebila put 'Amira' -- 'princess' in Arabic -- in the blank at the top of her daughter's immunization card on the day she was born. Sebsebila isn't alone: Many parents in Ethiopia now have the confidence to do the same.
按照埃塞俄比亚的风俗，父母要等上一段时间才会给婴儿取名字，因为孩子经常在出生后的最初几周里就夭折了。当赛布赛比拉的大女儿三年前出生时，她遵循传统，等了一个月才给孩子取名。这一次，由于对新生婴儿存活的可能性更有信心，赛布赛比拉在她女儿出生的当天就在免疫登记卡顶上的空白处写下了“阿米拉”(Amira)──阿拉伯语意为“公主”。赛布赛比拉不是单一特例：很多埃塞俄比亚父母现在都有信心这样做。
Ethiopia has lowered child mortality more than 60% since 1990, putting the country on track to achieve the Millennium goal of lowering child mortality two-thirds by 2015, compared with 1990. Though the world won't quite meet the goal, we've still made great progress: The number of children under 5 years old who die world-wide fell to 6.9 million in 2011, down from 12 million in 1990 (despite a growing global population).
自从1990年以来，埃塞俄比亚已经把儿童死亡率降低了60%以上，把国家送上了实现千年发展目标的轨道，到2015年儿童死亡率要比1990年下降三分之二。虽然到时候全世界尚不能实现这一目标，但是我们依然取得了极大的进步：全球五岁以下儿童死亡的数量从1990年的1,200万减少到了2011年的690万（尽管全球人口在不断增长）。
Another story of success driven by better measurement is polio. Starting in 1988, global health organizations (along with many countries) established a goal of eradicating polio, which focused political will and opened purse strings to pay for large-scale immunization campaigns. By 2000, the virus had nearly been wiped out; there are now fewer than 1, 000 cases world-wide.
另一个由更佳的量化措施促成成功的例子是脊髓灰质炎。从1988年开始，全球卫生组织（协同诸多国家）设定了消灭脊髓灰质炎的目标，这一行动凝聚了各方政治意志，让钱囊得以解开，为大规模免疫行动买单。到2000年，病毒基本消灭，现在全世界的脊髓灰质炎病例不足1,000例。
But getting rid of the very last cases is the hardest part. In order to stop the spread of infections, health workers have to vaccinate nearly all children under the age of 5 multiple times a year in polio-affected countries. There are now just three countries that have not eliminated polio: Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan. I visited northern Nigeria four years ago to try to understand why eradication is so difficult there. I saw that routine public health services were failing: Fewer than half the kids were getting vaccines regularly. One huge problem was that many small settlements in the region were missing from vaccinators' hand-drawn maps and lists documenting the locations of villages and numbers of children.
然而消灭最后的病例是最困难的部分。为防止感染扩散，保健人员一年中必须多次对脊髓灰质炎流行国家五岁以下的差不多所有儿童注射疫苗。目前只有三个国家还没有消灭脊髓灰质炎：尼日利亚、巴基斯坦和阿富汗。我四年前到过尼日利亚北部，试图弄清为什么在那儿消灭灰质炎如此之难。我发现那儿的日常公共卫生服务很不到位：能够定期接受疫苗注射的儿童不到一半。一个巨大的问题是，这个地区有很多小村落在接种人员的手绘地图及村庄地址与儿童数量登记册上无从查找。
To fix this, the polio workers walked through all high-risk areas in the northern part of the country, which enabled them to add 3, 000 previously overlooked communities to the immunization campaigns. The program is also using high-resolution satellite images to create even more detailed maps. As a result, managers can now allocate vaccinators efficiently.
为了解决这个问题，脊髓灰质炎防控人员走遍了这个国家北部所有的高危地区，这使得他们在免疫行动中增加了300个以前被人忽略的社区。这项计划还利用高分辨率的卫星图像制作了更加详细的地图。结果，管理者现在能够高效地指挥调动接种人员了。
What's more, the program is piloting the use of phones equipped with a GPS application for the vaccinators. Tracks are downloaded from the phone at the end of the day so managers can see the route the vaccinators followed and compare it to the route they were assigned. This helps ensure that areas that were missed can be revisited.
此外，这项计划正在让接种人员试用安装有全球定位系统(GPS)应用的手机。一天结束的时候，跟踪信息可以从手机上下载下来，这样管理者就可以看到接种人员行走的路线并将其与他们奉命要行走的路线进行比对。如此一来，可以保证遗漏掉的地区能够得到重访。
I believe these kinds of measurement systems will help us to finish the job of polio eradication within the next six years. And those systems can be used to help expand routine vaccination and other health activities, which means the legacy of polio eradication will live beyond the disease itself.
我相信这些量化体系会帮助我们在未来六年内完成消灭脊髓灰质炎的工作。而那些体系可以用来帮助我们扩展例行的疫苗接种及其它卫生保健行动，这就是说，消灭脊髓灰质炎所留下的遗产会在这种病灭绝后继续存在。
Another place where measurement is starting to lead to vast improvements is in education.
量化手段开始促进长足进步的另一个地方是教育领域。
In October, Melinda and I sat among two dozen 12th-graders at Eagle Valley High School near Vail, Colo. Mary Ann Stavney, a language-arts teacher, was leading a lesson on how to write narrative nonfiction pieces. She engaged her students, walking among them and eliciting great participation. We could see why Mary Ann is a master teacher, a distinction given to the school's best teachers and an important component of a teacher-evaluation system in Eagle County.
10月的时候，我和梅琳达(Melinda)来到科罗拉多州维尔(Vail)附近的伊格尔谷中学(Eagle Valley High School)，跟24名12年级的学生一起听课。语言艺术课老师玛丽•安•斯塔弗尼(Mary Ann Stavney)当时在讲授如何写非虚构类记叙文的课。她启发学生的兴趣、在学生中走来走去、诱导学生踊跃参与课堂活动。我们看得出为什么玛丽•安是一名大师级教师（master teacher，是授予该校最优秀教师的荣誉，也是伊格尔县(Eagle County)教师评估体系中的一项重要内容）。
Ms. Stavney's work as a master teacher is informed by a three-year project our foundation funded to better understand how to build an evaluation and feedback system for educators. Drawing input from 3, 000 classroom teachers, the project highlighted several measures that schools should use to assess teacher performance, including test data, student surveys and assessments by trained evaluators. Over the course of a school year, each of Eagle County's 470 teachers is evaluated three times and is observed in class at least nine times by master teachers, their principal and peers called mentor teachers.
斯塔弗尼作为大师级教师的资料是由我们的基金会资助的一个为期三年的项目提供的，该项目旨在更确切地弄清如何建立一个针对教育工作者的评估和反馈体系。在获得了3,000名教师输入的资料之后，项目重点强调了学校评估教师业绩时应该采用的几项指标，包括考试数据、学生调查以及训练有素的评估人员的评价。在整整一个学年里，伊格尔县的470名教师每一位都要接受三次评估，大师级教师、校长和被称为教学辅导老师的同事要到堂听至少九次课。
The Eagle County evaluations are used to give a teacher not only a score but also specific feedback on areas to improve and ways to build on their strengths. In addition to one-on-one coaching, mentors and masters lead weekly group meetings in which teachers collaborate to spread their skills. Teachers are eligible for annual salary increases and bonuses based on the classroom observations and student achievement.
伊格尔县的评估体系不仅用来给教师一个评定的分数，它还提供具体的反馈，指出哪些地方尚待提高和发挥长处的途径。除了一对一的辅导之外，教学辅导老师和和大师级教师每周都要召集小组会议，老师们在会上可以相互切磋、推广他们的授课技巧。依据听课结果和学生成绩，老师们有机会获得年度加薪及奖金的资格。
The program faces challenges from tightening budgets, but Eagle County so far has been able to keep its evaluation and support system intact -- likely one reason why student test scores have improved in Eagle County over the past five years.
这个项目面临着预算紧缩带来的挑战，但是伊格尔县到目前为止依然未让它的评估支撑体系受到影响──这很可能是伊格尔县学生考试成绩在过去五年里得以提高的一个原因。
I think the most critical change we can make in U.S. K-12 education, with America lagging countries in Asia and Northern Europe when it comes to turning out top students, is to create teacher-feedback systems that are properly funded, high quality and trusted by teachers.
在培养优等生方面，美国落后于亚洲和北欧的一些国家。在这样的背景下，我认为我们可以对美国的K-12（幼儿园至12年级）教育制度做出最关键的改变是建立一个有妥善资金来源、高质量而且受到老师们信任的教师反馈体系。
And there are plenty of other areas where our ability to measure can improve people's lives in powerful ways -- areas where we are falling short, unnecessarily.
我们的量化管理能力还可以在其它很多领域大力改善人们的生活──那些我们无谓地存在不足的领域。
In poor countries, we still need better ways to measure the effectiveness of the many government workers providing health services. They are the crucial link bringing tools such as vaccines and education to the people who need them most. How well trained are they? Are they showing up to work? How can measurement enable them to perform their jobs better?
在贫穷国家，我们仍然需要更好的手段来衡量众多政府工作人员在提供卫生保健服务时的有效性。他们是将疫苗和教育这些工具带给最需要的人的关键环节。他们接受培训的情况如何？他们有没有去上班？量化手段如何才能让他们做出更出色的工作成绩？
In the U.S., we should be measuring the value being added by colleges. Currently, college rankings are focused on inputs -- the scores and quality of students entering college -- and on judgments and prejudices about a school's 'reputation.' Students would be better served by measures of which colleges were best preparing their graduates for the job market. They then could know where they would get the most for their tuition money.
在美国，我们应该测算大学赋予学生的附加价值。目前，大学排名关注的是入学信息──进入某大学的学生考试成绩和质量──以及对一所学校“声誉”的判定与偏见。如果以大学帮助毕业生做好就业准备的能力为标准排名，学生会获得更有用的信息，那样他们就可以知道在什么地方他们的学费才会发挥最大效益。
In agriculture, creating a global productivity target would help countries focus on a key but neglected area: the efficiency and output of hundreds of millions of small farmers who live in poverty. It would go a long way toward reducing poverty if we had public scorecards showing how developing-country governments, donors and others are helping those farmers.
在农业领域，建立一个全球生产率指标可以帮助各国注意到一个非常关键但却被人忽略的方面：生活在贫困中的亿万小农户的效率和产出。如果我们手持公共记分卡，上面显示发展中国家的政府、捐赠人以及其他人士如何在帮助那些农民，必定对削减贫困大有帮助。
And if I could wave a wand, I'd love to have a way to measure how exposure to risks like disease, infection, malnutrition and problem pregnancies impact children's potential -- their ability to learn and contribute to society. Measuring that could help us quantify the broader impact of those risks and help us tackle them.
如果我能够挥舞魔杖，我希望能得到一种量化手段，看看遭受疾病、感染、营养不良和孕期问题会如何影响到孩子的发展潜力──他们学习和对社会贡献的能力。这样的测算可以帮助我们对那些风险带来的更广泛的影响进行量化，从而帮助我们解决这些问题。
The lives of the poorest have improved more rapidly in the past 15 years than ever before. And I am optimistic that we will do even better in the next 15 years. The process I have described -- setting clear goals, choosing an approach, measuring results, and then using those measurements to continually refine our approach -- helps us to deliver tools and services to everybody who will benefit, be they students in the U.S. or mothers in Africa. Following the path of the steam engine long ago, thanks to measurement, progress isn't 'doomed to be rare and erratic.' We can, in fact, make it commonplace.
在过去15年里最贫困人口的生活改善速度比以往任何时候都快。我非常乐观地认为我们在未来的15年里会做得更好。我所描述的这个过程──设定明确目标、选择一种行为方式、计量结果，然后使用这些量化数据继续改进我们的方法──可以帮助我们把工具和服务送交给可以受益的每一个人，无论他们是美国的学生还是非洲的母亲。许久以前蒸汽机发展的道路上多亏有计量的手段，进步不再“注定是寥寥无几、飘忽不定的”。实际上，我们是可以让进步变得司空见惯的。
(Mr. Gates is the co-chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the co-founder of Microsoft. This piece is adapted from the foundation's annual letter from Mr. Gates, to be published Wednesday.)
（比尔•盖茨(Bill Gates)是比尔及梅琳达•盖茨基金会(Bill &Melinda Gates Foundation)的联合主席和微软公司(Microsoft)的联合创始人。本文选自1月30日发表的由盖茨撰写的该基金会的年度公开信。
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