Puerto Rican Officials Feud Over NAEP Participation

Puerto Rican leaders are embroiled in a sharp disagreement over whether the island commonwealth should continue to participate in the National Assessment of Educational Progress, an exam in which their students have struggled.

The commonwealth’s secretary of education, Rafael Aragunde-Torres, wrote a letter earlier this month asking that U.S. officials allow it to be “permanently exempted” from participating in the test.

The secretary, in a Nov. 12 letter, argued that the translation of the NAEP in math, which has been given to Puerto Rican students in Spanish, as well as cultural differences not taken into account on test items, might be dragging...