Putting education in the hands of parents

About ABRE Tu Escuela

ABRETuEscuela.org is the first interactive tool designed for citizen use that allows the parents, teachers and the administrative personnel of the Puerto Rico Department of Education to see the individual performance of any public school on the Island and compare it to any of the other of the 1,271 schools that are part of the Department.

This interactive tool was developed using the first Puerto Rico School Performance Index compiled by the Public Policy Research Center (Centro de Investigación y Política Pública, or CIPP in Spanish).

School performance was measured beginning with the grades given by the teachers to the students and including the META standardized tests, College Board results and -in the case of high schools- the graduation index. According to the final score, the schools were graded A, B, C, D or F.

ABRE Tu Escuela has been possible thanks to the contribution of the Fundación Banco Popular.

Working towards free and transparent access to information in Puerto Rico since 2013.

ABRE Puerto Rico is a venture anchored in social innovation which tests the effectiveness of Puerto Rico’s public policies by using civil action, data analysis and interactive technologies. The project began in 2013 when a group of Puertorrican students enrolled in the University of Chicago decided to contribute positively to the public policy debate in Puerto Rico by using topics they were passionate about: technology, statistics and economics.

ABRE Puerto Rico searches for, analyzes and publishes related data in a simple and accessible way so that all citizens, even those not specialized or knowledgeable in statistics, can understand the degree of effectiveness of any public policy in Puerto Rico. ABRE Puerto Rico pushes for government transparency by:

• Compiling and publishing governmental data
• Developing visual aids such as digital graphs and interactive maps
• Helping to educate the citizenry regarding the important role that data and information play in ground-root, community-helmed campaigns and projects, as well as in how to make better decisions as a society.