Puerto Rico's DEPR Scales Microsoft Copilot to 220,000+ Students — AI-Assisted IEPs Support Students with Disabilities

Puerto Rico's public school system serves more than 220,000 students. Its Department of Education (DEPR) set out to give overstretched teachers, including special-education staff, a practical AI assistant rather than impose a top-down mandate.

DEPR partnered with Microsoft to roll out Microsoft 365 Copilot starting in 2025, aiming to reduce teacher administrative burden and support inclusion — including drafting individualized education plans (IEPs) and dual assessment versions for neurodivergent students.

Building on an existing base of over 200,000 Windows devices and 40,000 iPads, DEPR issued 15,000 active Copilot licences to its more than 20,000 teachers and administrators. The rollout is paired with an age-gated ethical-use framework ('Modelo Sense') restricting AI use for younger children, and an initial cohort of 15 schools combines AI with esports, robotics and CertiPort certification.

Teachers report that assessment and evaluation creation time fell from roughly one hour to about 15 minutes using Copilot.

The reported figures — licence counts, device totals and time savings — come from department and vendor accounts rather than an independent evaluation, and no rigorous study yet measures student learning outcomes or whether AI-assisted IEPs meet special-education quality standards; this should be read as an early, large-scale implementation case rather than a proven-impact study.