PRESS RELEASE
DR. MARIO MARAZZI‐SANTIAGO
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

April 13, 2018

INSTITUTE OF STATISTICS PUBLISHES SPECIAL REPORT FOR THE PREVENTION OF SCHOOL DROPOUT

The Puerto Rico Statistics Institute (Institute) today released the special report Early Detection System for School Dropouts for Public High Schools in Puerto Rico: Using Data to Provide Student Support, which provides guidance for the identification and early intervention of students who may be more likely to drop out of school before completing it.

According to the report, although the dropout rate for all grades in Puerto Rico has been decreasing (0.7% in the year 2015-2016 versus 0.9% in the year 2014-2015), the rates by educational level have been consistently higher at the higher level (high school) with 2.3% in the year 2015-2016 versus 0.7% in the intermediate level and 0.1% in the elementary level for that same year. These data justify providing special support to high school students in order to prevent them from dropping out of school.

To access the full report you can visit the following link: 694ec0e7b7a478691ca522cc_IEPR_Perfil_de_Emisiones_Toxicas_2016.pdf

An Early Warning System (EWS) is a series of defined and consistent procedures that, based on student data, allow the teacher to identify early students who are most likely to become school dropouts. “After the student is identified, this system allows the teacher, together with the school management, and subject to available resources, to assign the student one or more interventions with the purpose of reducing the likelihood of dropping out of school, without stigmatizing the student,” explained Dr. Orville M. Disdier, senior manager of Statistical Projects at the Institute and author of the report.

The characteristics or variables that were most important when predicting the probability of dropping out of school were: the results of standardized science tests, grades in English, grades in Spanish and unexcused absences. For example, as soon as a student scores a C in English or Spanish subjects, or accumulates 2 to 4 unexcused absences, they could be classified as having a “moderate risk of desertion”.

On the other hand, as soon as a student scores D or F in English or Spanish subjects, or accumulates a total of 5 or more unexcused absences, they could be classified as having a “high risk of desertion”. Depending on each case, the student may be assigned general or individual interventions. For example, general interventions could include sending written, telephone or electronic communications to parents/guardians and group workshops, and others. On the other hand, individual interventions could include personalized meetings and the assignment of a student mentor, among others.

With the Early Detection System or EWS, for its acronym in English, for School Dropouts, the Institute seeks to empower our teachers and principals with the best that science has to offer, in terms of early detection of students at high risk. As with almost any social problem, prevention is the key and for that we need tools to help us identify those students at risk in a timely manner.

“In order to be fully effective, of course, identification without intervention is totally ineffective. The intervention is up to teachers, principals and more broadly to the Department of Education, subject to the resources available to carry out some of these interventions. The purpose of this report is not to announce the interventions, but rather to identify students using scientific data in a way that is easy to implement in the classroom, and at the same time to appreciate how this knowledge can be used, we present some interventions that have been used in other places successfully and that in some instances already exist in Puerto Rico,” said Dr. Disdier.

For his part, Dr. Mario Marazzi-Santiago, executive director of the Institute, pointed out that Act No. 165-2011 of July 29, 2011 amended Article 1.03 of Law No. 149 of July 15, 1999 (Organic Law of the Puerto Rico Department of Education) in order for the Institute to develop, together with the Department, an EWS for school dropouts. “With the publication of this report, we are complying with our responsibility to the law, and establishing the theoretical and practical bases for the possible establishment, for the first time in Puerto Rico, of an EWS, which would unite us with the more than 31 states and territories of the United States that have this type of system,” said Dr. Marazzi-Santiago.

The Puerto Rico Statistics Institute is an autonomous governmental entity responsible for coordinating the Government's statistical production service to ensure that the data collection and statistics systems, on which public policies are based, are complete, reliable, and have quick and universal access. The IEPR has in its inventory, accessible through www.estadisticas.pr.gov, about 300 statistical products. In addition, it is a custodian and provides access to over 100 data sets or “data sets” through www.data.pr.gov and to over 40 tables and more than 6 thousand indicators through: www.indicadores.pr

In addition, as the leading entity of Puerto Rico's SDC, the IEPR manages the SDC portal, which contains the main statistical reports and publications of the U.S. Census Bureau on Puerto Rico, specifically those that are most in demand, such as annual population estimates; the Puerto Rico Community Survey and official statistics on Puerto Rico's decennial population and housing censuses, among others. The Puerto Rico SDC portal can be accessed through: https://censo.estadisticas.pr/

For more information you can visit our website: www.estadisticas.pr.gov. In addition, you can follow us on social networks through Facebook accounts (statistics.pr), Twitter (@EstadisticasPR) and LinkedIn (Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics).

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Press Contact: Sandra Morales Blanes (787) 688-0401

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PRESS RELEASE
DR. MARIO MARAZZI‐SANTIAGO
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

April 25, 2018

INSTITUTE OF STATISTICS ORDERS PUBLICATION OF MORTALITY DATA

The decision of the Board of Directors paves the way for greater transparency to save lives after future hurricanes in Puerto Rico and supports ongoing efforts to review the number of deaths as a result of Hurricane Maria.

The Institute of Statistics of Puerto Rico (Institute) announced today the approval of a series of methodological standards that must be used to measure the number of fatalities from future natural disasters in Puerto Rico, as well as to produce final estimates of the number of deaths as a result of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, a process that still remains incomplete today.

The methodological standards approved by the Institute's Board of Directors include: (1) the need to conduct a case-level epidemiological study to comprehensively measure the number of fatalities from any natural disaster, (2) the sources of information that should be used for this type of epidemiological study, (3) the criteria that will be used to attribute a specific death to a natural disaster, and (4) the set of mortality data that must be published online and updated daily.

The rules were approved in the Resolution No. 2018-03 of the Institute's Board approved this week. The Resolution also orders PRIS staff to take all necessary actions permitted under the Institute Enabling Act to ensure that these methodological standards are adopted and implemented by the Government of Puerto Rico.

For example, under the Resolution No. 2018-03, PRIS expert staff and financial resources are available to ensure that an exhaustive case-level epidemiological study is carried out to complete the review of the number of fatalities from Hurricane Maria. In addition, the Resolution requires that any epidemiological study of cases of disaster-related mortality in Puerto Rico be able to take advantage of information from the following sources: death certificates, medical records, forensic pathology files and the testimony of family members.

In addition, the Resolution adopts the criteria and classification structure developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) for the attribution of a specific death to a natural disaster. These criteria are described in the Reference guide for the certification of deaths in the event of a natural, human-induced or chemical/radioactive disaster.

Finally, the Resolution describes the specific data fields that must be published and updated daily for each death on the Puerto Rico Open Data Portal:
https://data.pr.gov/. To do this, the Institute will use its authority, which includes powers such as subpoena, to request the necessary set of data from the Puerto Rico Health Department on a daily basis. The Institute will also be available to train staff from the Puerto Rico Department of Health, so that they can upload the necessary data sets themselves.

“As the next hurricane season approaches, we must work to ensure that Puerto Rico's data infrastructure is better prepared to inform our citizens and the world about conditions in Puerto Rico. In the case of mortality, allowing people on the other side of the world to see our latest death records allows scientists around the world to analyze our data, even when there is no electricity or Internet in Puerto Rico, to identify patterns that can save lives in a timely manner. We owe it to the hundreds, if not the thousands, of people who died as a result of Hurricane Maria, so that we never allow this to happen again,” said Dr. Mario Marazzi-Santiago, executive director of the Institute.

Currently, the Puerto Rico Department of Public Safety attributes only 64 deaths to Hurricane Maria. In December, after several independent researchers discovered that the number of fatalities from Hurricane Maria could be more than a thousand, the Government of Puerto Rico ordered a review of Maria's death toll and stopped providing the public with monthly mortality totals.

The Resolution of the Institute's Board explicitly recognizes that in the 3 months following the passage of hurricanes Irma and María over Puerto Rico, there were higher-than-average deaths in Puerto Rico, amounting to more than a thousand, and that this increase in deaths is probably related to the passage of hurricanes Irma and María over Puerto Rico. The resolution also aims to support the work of a group of independent researchers from George Washington University who were hired by the Government of Puerto Rico to analyze various issues related to mortality after Hurricane Maria.

The Institute's Board had been carefully analyzing and considering the approval of this Resolution, after it was able to restart its work last month. Previously, he had not been able to meet, even before hurricanes Irma and María made landfall in Puerto Rico, due to a legal dispute that arose last summer, after the Governor tried to dismiss several members of the Institute's Board of Directors without due process. The dispute was finally resolved in the first instance last month, following a court ruling that the Governor lacked authority to dismiss Board members without due process.

The Puerto Rico Statistics Institute is an autonomous governmental entity responsible for coordinating the Government's statistical production service to ensure that the data collection and statistics systems, on which public policies are based, are complete, reliable, and have quick and universal access. The Institute has in its inventory, accessible through https://estadisticas.pr.gov/, about 300 statistical products. In addition, it is a custodian and provides access to over 100 data sets or “data sets” through https://data.pr.gov/ and to over 40 tables and more than 6 thousand indicators through: https://www.indicadores.pr/.

In addition, as the leading entity of Puerto Rico's SDC, the Institute manages the SDC portal, which contains the main statistical reports and publications of the U.S. Census Bureau on Puerto Rico, specifically those that are most in demand, such as annual population estimates; the Puerto Rico Community Survey and official statistics on Puerto Rico's decennial population and housing censuses, among others. The Puerto Rico SDC portal can be accessed through: https://censo.estadisticas.pr/.

For more information you can visit our website: https://estadisticas.pr.gov/. In addition, you can follow us on social networks through Facebook accounts (statistics.pr), Twitter (@EstadisticasPR) and LinkedIn (Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics).

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Press Contact: Sandra Morales Blanes/ (787) 688-0401

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Authorized Statements by Dr. Mario Marazzi-Santiago, Executive Director of the Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics, on Statistics of Occupied Government Positions