Teachers Assn. commissions study to measure lag in public education

Puerto Rico Teachers Association President Víctor Manuel Bonilla Sánchez

By The Star Staff

Puerto Rico Teachers Association (AMPR by its initials in Spanish) President Víctor Manuel Bonilla Sánchez announced on Wednesday that the AMPR has commissioned a study with which they intend to update the situation regarding the academic lag among public school students.

“We have a contract with experts where we must have that study to be responsible and say whether two years or more have been lost,” Bonilla Sánchez told CyberNews. “We commissioned it now, this summer.”

The study is expected to be available in four months.

The lag worsened as a result of hurricanes Irma and Maria, the earthquakes in the island’s south and the COVID-19 pandemic. The issue was one that the AMPR insisted the Department of Education should address. In Bonilla Sánchez’s opinion, no secretary of that agency has been interested in doing so.

“They were presented with the plans [to address the gap], but none of the secretaries had any acceptance,” Bonilla Sánchez said. “None of them have sat down to discuss any plan on the gap. And I imagine that they don’t believe in having 15 students [per classroom] either, they only focus on 25. They don’t think it’s effective and that’s why we are giving them this alternative to address the academic gap.”

Regarding the figure of around 9,000 students who did not pass to the next grade, and the matter of about 28% having had poor grades, the AMPR president said “truly, sometimes one feels even frustrated, because that is what we are here for, so that we have fewer failing students.”

“It is imperative that one of the agency’s priorities be to address the academic gap increased by hurricanes, earthquakes and the pandemic,” Bonilla Sánchez added. “Year after year, we have been demanding that this situation be addressed directly. None of the strategies that have been implemented for this have had satisfactory results. Our proposal for small [classroom] groups of 15 students, which we have promoted for a very long time, is the only strategy that no administration has tried so far. Today we are once again calling on the secretary to implement this proposal that would allow for individualizing teaching and more effectively serving Special Education students, who represent almost 40 percent of the student enrollment. This initiative would also distance us from the disastrous practice of closing schools and declaring teachers redundant, which has not achieved any results or savings.”