Puerto Rico Department of Education
Government of Puerto Rico

The Puerto Rico Department of Education (PRDOE; Spanish: Departamento de Educación de Puerto Rico) is one of five jurisdiction-wide public education systems in the United States, with Hawaii, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa being the others. The PRDOE is the state education agency in charge of managing public schools in Puerto Rico as well as the island's education system and curricula. The department, headquartered in Hato Rey, San Juan, is the result of a United States state department of education. It is also the largest agency of the executive branch of Puerto Rico, with, as of 2019, an annual budget of more than $3.5 billion USD and over 72,000 staff—including more than 41,000 teachers, and as of 2020 the department is the third-largest school district in the United States by enrollment, with over 276,413 students and 857 schools.
The department was formerly known as the Department of Public Instruction of Puerto Rico. Under local law, all public schools are required to be licensed by the Puerto Rico Education Council.
History
The department was established under section 6 of Article IV of the Constitution of Puerto Rico on 25 July 1952.
In 1950, there were 74 districts, each managed by a superintendent. Juan Bernardo Huyke who was the superintendent of the Bayamón district in 1950, and also served as the Secretary of Education of Puerto Rico; he wrote a number of books and was a strong proponent of bilingual education for the island public school students.
In 2012 governor Luis Fortuño inaugurated the first school under the "21st century" program intended to modernize the island's schools.
“Puerto Rico Department of Education” enters the record as government of Puerto Rico. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Puerto, Rico and Department can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4294526. VIAF identifies the subject as 151272194. The Library of Congress control number is n80128761. 1 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2019, 2020, 1952 and 1950.
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This entry incorporates text from “Puerto Rico Department of Education” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.