A struggling public school system and world-class universities
The University of Puerto Rico (UPR) is the flagship of education in Puerto Rico. With 11 campuses throughout the island, a $1.3 billion budget; more than 69,000 enrolled students and about 10,000 degrees awarded each year, UPR is preparing some of the best and brightest students for the challenges of today’s workplace.
Puerto Rico is also fortunate to have 18 private post-secondary school systems—headed by t Inter American University (around 44,000 enrolled), the Ana G. Méndez University System (36,635 enrolled) and the Pontifical Catholic University (10,163 enrolled).
Tuition at the post-secondary schools in Puerto Rico is quite inexpensive compared with the mainland despite recent increases. The College Board’s Trends in College Pricing 2007 shows the current average tuition at UPR (the only four-year public postsecondary institution on the island) is $1,777 up 25% from $1,421 the previous school year. At the local private universities the average tuition is $4,809, up 1% from $4,763 in 2006-07. The same report indicated that in mainland post-secondary institutions the cost of studying at four-year private colleges averages $23,712 a year, an increase of 12% from $21,235. Tuition costs at four-year public universities average $6,185, up 6.6% from $5,804. With tuition at both public and private universities about one-fourth the price of those in the mainland U.S., post-secondary institutions in Puerto Rico are still one of the best deals.
Despite Puerto Rico’s outstanding post-secondary schools, it is impossible to look at education in Puerto Rico without analyzing the public school system. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), there were 563,490 students enrolled in elementary and high school in the 2005-06 school year. This number is down almost 3% from the 575,648 students the previous school year.
The biggest problem by far in the public school system is the lack of funding caused in large part by the large amount of money spent by the Education Department on non-teaching personnel. In Fiscal 2005, just $1,123 was spent per pupil in Puerto Rico’s elementary and secondary schools, according to the NCES, while the average nationwide was $2,337 – a difference of about 48%.
“Students who are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches,” is a statistic used to determine the social state of the enrolled students. An astounding 96% of enrolled students in Puerto Rico are eligible for free/reduced lunches compared with only 64.3% of those in Mississippi – the poorest state in the U.S. - and a respectable 26.3% of enrolled students in Connecticut, which has about the same amount of students enrolled as Puerto Rico.
Exacerbating this issue of lack of money is the No Child Left Behind Act of 2004. This legislation attempts to “increase accountability for student performance; focus [spend money] on what works, reduce bureaucracy and increase flexibility and empower parents.” The sad reality of the legislation in school districts around the country and not just in Puerto Rico according to most teachers and many politicians is that the ideas may sound good on paper but they are under funded and poorly organized.
In Puerto Rico, more than 97% of schools during the 2004-2005 school year were considered Title I. These Title I schools are the ones throughout the country that need the most financial assistance under the No Child Left Behind Act. For comparison, 70.2% of Mississippi’s schools—with all of their problems—and only 40.8% of Connecticut’s schools fall under Title I.
Unfortunately these alarming statistics are translating into poor school performance and under-prepared students. The Puerto Rico Department of Education places the current dropout rate of students enrolled in local public schools about 12%. In fact, a frightening 34% of the island’s population 25 years and over have less than a high school diploma. These numbers compare with an average dropout rate of about 5% and only 16% with less than a high school diploma in the mainland U.S. Furthermore, with two official languages—English and Spanish—and a formal English curriculum at all of the island’s schools, recent polls suggest that a mere 22% of the population consider themselves fully bilingual and 56.2% communicate very poorly or not at all in English.
Fortunately enough there seems to be at least a little light at the end of this tunnel. Puerto Rico schools have one of the highest percentages of students, 15.2%, with individualized education programs (IEP). These IEPs create a plan for teachers, parents, school administrators, related services personnel and students (when appropriate) to work together to improve educational results for every student with disabilities. Mississippi, on the other hand, has a rate of 13.8% while Connecticut has a rate of just 11.6%.
Students in Puerto Rico’s public schools also benefit from its relatively low student/teacher ratio. While Mississippi and Connecticut have relatively high student/teacher ratios—16 to one and 15 to one respectively—enrolled students in Puerto Rico schools enjoy a ratio of 13 to one. There are currently more than 43,000 full-time equivalent (FTE) teachers working in schools throughout the island.
