$16000 a year per student

They must be factoring in the WAPA bills..... 😉

If you noticed in the article: less than 50% of education employees are teachers and 27% have nothing to do with teaching. The territory is rife with administrators, assistant administrators and administrative assistants. I know of one department (not in Education) that has NO service providers on staff, is 100% administrative, and contracts out for service providers. And they exist to provide service.

Until they can get rid of the deadwood, the territorial government is doomed. This is not just a problem for education, but they are the largest department.

A recent article in the Economist talks about this EXACT SAME PROBLEM in Puerto Rico (too many govt workers)
http://www.economist.com/node/6980051

High technology sounds wonderful. But what Puerto Rico has needed over the past few decades is more medium-tech plants. These would employ more people, teach them skills better suited to the island's level of development, and tighten links to local suppliers and business services. More service jobs for the unskilled would be good, too. Steven Davis at the University of Chicago's business school, another contributor to the Brookings/CNE studies, points out that jobs in tourism and recreation engage a lower share of the workforce in Puerto Rico—despite its beautiful beaches—than in any of the 50 states.

In short, by lowering demand for less educated workers, lopsided investment has exacerbated the welfare-driven distortions in the island's labour supply. The result is lots of idle poor. The Section 936 rules were phased out between the mid-1990s and 2005, but the damage will persist. Many Puerto Ricans have acquired few useful habits and skills over the past three decades; and the welfare state, though smaller than before, is still pervasive enough to lock many of the labour distortions in place.

Puerto Rico's bloated government also bears much of the blame. Around 30% of the territory's jobs are in the public sector. Among other things, a big and coddled bureaucracy undermines Puerto Rico's educational achievements in two ways. First, nearly half those on the education department's payroll are not teachers; quality has fallen because of low accountability and mismanagement. Second, because of the small private sector, too few well-educated Puerto Ricans are gaining useful skills and experience in the marketplace.

As he walked through Aguadilla's town hall recently, Mr Méndez boasted about each employee's university or graduate-school credentials as he introduced them. The trouble, he says, is that “All they want to do is find security only. They have no ambition...Everybody wants to work for the government.” Manuel Reyes, of the Puerto Rico Manufacturers Association, also sees little hope that the government's role will shrink. “There is no light at the end of the tunnel,” he says, “because we are still in denial.” And the rest of America is still indifferent.

The answer is to shrink government over the next few years, forcing people to regain their ambition.

Hi! good article and very good thoughts, i completely agree with the author. Especially this part “WHERE IS THE MONEY GOING...INTO WHO'S POCKETS???” It's very important in present days. Because A lot of students don’t have enough time to study on high level, cause they have to earn money to pay for their education bills, and that’s why, of course, they order paper writing somewhere like https://pro-papers.com/investment-writing-service and balancing on the verge of college or university expulsion. While the state spends on official data such quantity of money

with the VI spending the most per student, we should have the best of everything for those students including brand new schools and state of the art everything

Not sure about the most, as NY in 2015 spent 21,000 per student. NJ and DC were higher as well. But we tax the shit out of everything, so why not spend it.