The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is a Caribbean archipelago located 1,000 miles off the southeast coast of the United States. A U.S. territory acquired in 1898 after the defeat of Spain in the Spanish-American War, Puerto Rico’s population of 3.1 million are U.S. citizens, but with only some of the rights of citizens. Its Resident Commissioner is a nonvoting member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Puerto Rico’s education system has faced many challenges over the previous years, beginning with the destruction of schools as a result of Hurricane Maria and Hurricane Irma. The COVID-19 pandemic then exacerbated education challenges in Puerto Rico as students had to receive education online instead, and many teachers and students did not have access to internet at home. Even though the pandemic is in the past, Puerto Rico’s education system is still under stress but there are efforts in place to improve it.

Education System

After acquisition of the islands, the U.S. created a centralized public school system in Puerto Rico and expanded education beyond just the elite. This system is the seventh largest public education system in the U.S., with 240,000 public school students. Structure is similar to that of the U.S., with free and compulsory education from ages 5 to 18 (kindergarten through grade 12). After receiving a high school diploma, students can apply for higher education that includes vocational and technical programs offered by technical institutions and community colleges, as well as the public University of Puerto Rico and private universities, that offer associate, bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees.

Challenges to Education

Inadequate Resources. QAHE, an international nongovernmental, independent quality assurance agency, notes various challenges facing Puerto Rico’s education system. These include limited resources, outdated facilities and insufficient teaching material for the public schools, and a significant high school dropout rate resulting from poverty, lack of family support and limited extracurricular activities.

Inequitable Funding. A former senior advisor to the U.S. secretary of education who worked in Puerto Rico for four years describes Puerto Rico’s education system as delivering the worst K-12 outcomes in the U.S., suffering from what he describes as systematic discrimination. He reports, for example, that Puerto Rico is unable to access federal reimbursement for special education, or support from programs such as the Rural and Low-Income Schools grant, “even though more than 40,000 of it students lie in federally designated rural areas.” He also reports that this has meant “the loss of tens of millions of dollars to support students” and the “lowest per-student funding ratio in the country.” In particular, this has affected students with disabilities and students in rural communities, leaving the islands’ students “at the bottom nationally in academic assessments.”

Natural Disasters. In addition, the schools have suffered the disruption and devastating impact on infrastructure of multiple natural disasters in recent years—Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017, and a 2020 earthquake.

Vicious Cycle of Poverty and Lack of Education. Daily Newspaper El Vocero de Puerto Rico reported in 2025 that 63% of families living in poverty either had not completed high school or held only a high school diploma. Puerto Rico’s former Secretary of Education Cesar Rey noted that more than half of the country’s public education students live below the poverty line, relating poor school retention to generational poverty and lack of social mobility. In the long run, this impacts GNP. Says sociologist Emilio Paantojas, “Poor people aren’t poor simply because they lack education—it’s a result of the failing public education system, school closures, teacher shortages, and other systemic issues.”

Transforming the Education System

In 2021, the U.S. Department of Education and the Government of Puerto Rico committed to an education system transformation. In May 2023, the Puerto Rican government launched the Initiative for Decentralization of Education and Autonomy of Regions (IDEAR). The intention of IDEAR was to create a school system directly responsive to the needs of students and families. There was to be a focus on community outreach, with key “pillars” including structural realignment, governance and depoliticization, operations and fiscal decentralization, academic management and equity, and monitoring and risk management.

Early in 2024, three regions piloted roles that would traditionally be taken on by an LEA (local educational agency) in a decentralized system, with the intention to establish the island’s first autonomous LEA by the beginning of the 2024-2025 school year. Several months later, critics claimed that participatory governance, key to decentralization, was not taking place.

In November 2024, the U.S. Department of Education released the “Puerto Rico Transformation Guidebook,” delineating key actions needed for the launch of the first LEA by July 2025, in time for the start of the 2025-2026 school year. Then-U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona noted that there were 10 essential actions necessary for decentralization to succeed, in four categories: governance, funding, capacity and strategic planning.

Has Decentralization Occurred?

At this time, the transformative decentralization movement is still Cardona’s “vision for the future.” While it is hoped that greater administrative autonomy will translate into better educational outcomes for Puerto Rican students and address education challenges in Puerto Rico, this has not yet happened. The Ponce region was to implement a provisional LEA that would test the autonomous structure, but the system is still functioning as a unitary system, combining the State Educational Agency and LEA responsibilities. 

– Staff Reports
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