Friends of Chapter 74 Vocational Technical & Agricultural Education,
We are pleased to share this piece published today in the Sun Chronicle.
David
Proposed lottery for vocational and technical school admissions opposed by Attleboro area school administrators, local state rep
· By SUSAN LaHOUD slahoud
Carpentry shop instructor Brian Boyd, center, gives feedback to students recently at Tri-County Regional Vocational Technical High School in Franklin
Cosmetology student Kendra Vigstol styles the hair of fellow junior cosmetology student Naomy Morales recently at Tri-County Vocational Technical High School in Franklin.
A number of area superintendents and a local state rep are opposed to newly proposed rules by the state Department of Education on the creation of a lottery system for vocational and technical school admissions.
Under the initiative proposed by the Healey administration, the regulation changes are aimed at improving access to career technical education (CTE) programs across the state. “These changes would strengthen CTE recruitment efforts and require lottery admissions at all CTE schools and programs with a waitlist,” the administration said in a press release in late February. The Healey administration contends the system is needed with the demand for slots in the programs, which train students in many high-demand trades, continuing to outpace supply, according to the state education department. Reform supporters have argued for years that the existing admissions process disproportionately leaves the limited slots out of reach for students of color, English language learners, students with disabilities or those from low-income families.
Cosmetology student Gabriella Geer, a junior, works on her craft recently at Tri-County Regional Vocational Technical High School.
Among the changes, which were the subject of a March 10 public hearing by the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, is requiring career technical schools with waitlists to use lotteries when selecting students. That’s a shift from the status quo in which schools can select students based on grades, attendance and discipline records.
Under the proposal, CTE programs may only use excessive unexcused absences and/or certain disciplinary conduct as selective criteria for students to enter the lottery process. Also, middle schools located in sending districts would be required to maintain a district-wide policy on how students are made aware of and gain exposure to CTE in their district, regional, agricultural, and other public high schools.
In the weighted lottery system for admission to a CTE school or program in which all students are entered, students who meet additional permitted criteria are given one additional weight per criterion. A student with a weight of two has twice the chance of being selected in the lottery as a student with a weight of one.
While the regulations would decouple admissions from attendance and discipline records, those criteria could still limit which students enter the lottery pool. Schools could exclude from the lottery students with 10 or more unexcused absences per school year as well as students who were suspended or expelled for more than 10 days.
The Vocational Education Justice Coalition cited attendance data from several districts and said the share of students with at least 10 unexcused absences is significantly higher in districts with large populations of students of color, warning that they would therefore be disqualified from the admissions lottery “in disproportionate percentages.”
“The insertion of 10 or more unexcused absences as a gateway for entry into the lottery negates any progress in eliminating grades, recommendations, and interviews,” VEJC, whose members include groups such as the Massachusetts Teachers Association and La Colaborativa, wrote. “It is the coalition’s belief that the proposed revised regulations will result in the same discriminatory selection pattern we have seen ever since DESE began publishing admissions data.”
Healey administration officials said they crafted the regulations based on months of work and study, including several board meetings that focused on the career technical admissions process.
In 2021, the board removed statewide requirements for programs to use grades, attendance, discipline records and counselor recommendations as admissions criteria, but it did not ban their use. Twenty-five of the 29 career technical districts kept some selective criteria in place.
Lawyers for Civil Rights and the Center for Law and Education filed a civil rights complaint in February 2023, arguing that the process remains unfair and prioritizes white, higher-income students who speak English as a native language.
These proposed regulations are part of the administration’s larger efforts to “Reimagine High School” aimed at promoting programs that equip students with the skills they need to succeed in today’s job market. Healey filed a supplemental budget last month which includes $75 million for Career Technical Education School grants that will add an additional 3,000 new CTE seats over three years. Also, Healey’s BRIGHT Act includes $100 million for Skills Capital grants that support high schools, colleges, and educational institutions to upgrade technology and instructional lab spaces, expand career programs, and increase capacity in workforce training programs.
“Massachusetts’ career technical education programs play an important role in our state’s education system and economy. They provide students with the skills they need to succeed in today’s job market and help us meet the workforce needs of our employers,” Healey said in the February press release. “Our administration has been engaging with families, educators, CTE schools, local officials and the business community to determine how we can increase access to these programs and set all of our students up for success. We are proud to propose these regulation changes and appreciate the Board’s review.”
“I believe a lottery system and strengthening recruitment efforts will improve CTE access for all students,” Education Secretary Patrick Tutwiler said at the time.
However, area school administrators and some local lawmakers say the admissions policy being proposed by the governor’s administration does not address the issues and is overreaching.
Attleboro schools superintendent David Sawyer said the school committee has not yet addressed the proposal, “but the administration is opposed to the amendments as proposed. For APS, the sticking point is this sentence: ‘All students who apply to a career technical education school or program will be entered into its lottery.’”
“Attleboro High School only serves resident students of the City of Attleboro and can adequately service every student who wishes to participate in Career and Technical Education,” he said via email. “Therefore, a lottery for admission to the school does not apply. However, the proposed regulations include the word ‘program,’ which could potentially have an impact on AHS as we currently place students in specific programs, e.g., medical assisting, cosmetology, automotive, based on merit.
“Students earn priority placement based upon factors including, grades, attendance, and discipline,” Sawyer said. “By doing so, we ensure that students are in a pathway for success in relation to the content of the Career Vocational Frameworks.
“As far as a policy to make middle schoolers aware of the vocational options, we will have to develop a formal method to meet this requirement, but we already have many systems in place to bring awareness the advantages of participating in CTE to middle schoolers,” he said. “Attleboro has regular open house events, A Night to Discover, and has done tours during the school day to expose middle school students to the options available to them.”
Administrators from Tri-County Regional Vocational Technical High School in Franklin, whose students include those locally from Norfolk, North Attleboro, Plainville, Seekonk, and Wrentham, and Southeastern Regional Vocational Technical High School in Easton, whose students locally include Foxboro, Mansfield and Norton, along with state Rep. Adam Scanlon, D-North Attleboro, spoke against the proposed lottery during the March 10 public session by DESE.
Tri-County Superintendent Karen Maguire, in a follow-up email request by The Sun Chronicle, said there are a number of reasons the regional vocational school is not in support of the proposed changes.
She said the school committee sets policy for the Tri-County school district, which includes the admission policy.
“This long-standing admission policy considers grades, attendance, discipline, recommendation from middle school counselors, and an expression of interest (interview) for all students who apply,” Maguire said. “These criteria are important because of the uniqueness of our educational delivery system.
“Students need to be in person to learn a vocational program. So naturally, attendance is important. Setting the bar as low as 27 days of unexcused absence is really concerning. We also need to make sure that students who participate in our programs can do so safely — this is especially important in industrial, live workspaces that model real world work experiences. This can be an overwhelming experience for some — which is why there is a behavior component to the admissions.
“The (DESE) first introduced the idea of a lottery six years ago. Regulatory changes were made in 2021 that refined what a school could consider in the application process. Now they are proposing schools with Chapter 74 programs choose between a blind or weighted lottery for admission.
“This is not something we support. There is no need to implement a lottery to all vocational school systems across the commonwealth. They cite disproportionality in student demographics. But when I look at the demographics at Tri-County, and many other vocational schools, I fail to see what the state sees.
“To make things more confusing, the state has yet to publish the formula they are using to determine disproportionality. I pushed this issue at the Board of Education meeting last month but still haven’t seen what they used. It makes no sense to compare students applying to Tri-County from North Attleboro to the demographics of the students in the city of Chelsea, or Brockton, and so on. We need a clear answer here.”
Maguire said yet another issue is the seat allocation.
“Currently Tri-County apportions seats by town based on population. However, the lottery would impact this, making it difficult for towns to plan financially,” she said. “This is particularly concerning because of the Tri-County building project and the cost associated with it to our 11 communities.
“There are a number of concerns with this broad-brush approach to address perceived inequities. Frankly, they are trying to address a problem that isn’t there. I am troubled by it as DESE already has the ability to intervene in a district that has an issue with disproportionality in subgroups — so I cannot see why this implementation of a lottery is necessary.
“It is an overreach and usurps the rights of the school committee to set policy.”
Additionally, she said, “there is also concern among parents that this is not the right approach to admissions to a school like Tri-County. For years, our sending schools have known what a student needs to do to be considered for admission to Tri-County. This has motivated students to attend school and do their best. We hear this all the time.
“Our motto is ‘Work Hard Today Counts.’ We are proud of that — our community believes in hard work. There is nothing wrong with expecting hard work from our students.”
Scanlon, who is proposing legislative changes that he said will better address the issues cited by state education officials, said via email this week that under the admissions policy proposed by DESE “schools would not be able to evaluate a student’s grades, meaningfully measure interest, or evaluate guidance counselor letters of recommendation. Under current regulations, schools are allowed to evaluate these criteria.
“Under a lottery system, students would essentially earn ‘tickets’ to improve their chances in a lottery. A student will obtain one ticket if they apply and demonstrate interest in attending a vocational school. However, the student’s level of interest would not be evaluated. Meaning that a student who shows some level of interest compared to a student who could demonstrate a more sincere interest would essentially be weighted the same under the proposed lottery.
“A school would also not be able to evaluate and consider a student’s answers in an interview where the student could demonstrate how they have faced adversity and what they have done to overcome challenges in their life, such as being a student with special needs, an English Learner, or economically disadvantaged etc.”
“A student that has not received fewer than 27 unexcused full-day absences in grades 7-8 for the 270 school days before applying would receive an additional ticket in the lottery. Meaning a student that has missed 26 unexcused full days of school would be given then same weight as a student who has never missed a day of school.
“A student will also receive an additional ticket if they were never expelled, was never suspended under M.G.L Ch. 71 s. 37 and 37 ½ (laws relating to a student’s possession of a deadly with a weapon on school premises or assault on school premises) or never suspended for more than 10 days M.G.L Ch. 37H ¾ (law relating to suspension on grounds other than those set forth). In other words, a student who has been suspended for 9 days under M.G.L 37H ¾ would be given the same weight in the lottery as a student who has never even received a detention.
“At the end of the day, our employers want graduating students who have a proven record of showing up to work, working with others, and excelling in their studies.”
Scanlon, along with state Rep. Frank Moran, D-Lawrence, is proposing that a commission be established to study and make recommendations on admissions policies for vocational, technical and career schools. Co-signers to the proposed bill include state Rep. Jim Hawkins, D-Attleboro, state Rep. Marcus Vaughn, R-Wrentham and state Sen. Kelly Dooner, R-Taunton.
“Regardless of if you are in favor of the lottery or not, it is clear that we need peer reviewed and accurate data to guide our decision making, especially when these decisions impact all children throughout the Commonwealth,” Scanlon said. The proposed bill, “HD.4510 would establish a commission of important stakeholders to study and make recommendations on Ch. 74 admissions policies, the collection, dissemination, and analysis of district-level and statewide data on Chapter 74 admissions and waitlists, and the standard for review and enforcement of said policies and data.
“The data that DESE and BESE have been using and misleading,” he said, referencing a letter from the Massachusetts Association of Vocational Administrators which supports the bill being proposed by Scanlon.
“It is unclear to me on whether there are discriminatory outcomes in every vocational school without having proper data. I can tell you that DESE’s proposal would impact the entire Commonwealth,” Scanlon said. However, “in regions like mine, we don’t have the same demographic makeup as New Bedford, Fall River, or Boston; therefore, this blanket-wide proposal is a solution to a ‘problem’ that doesn’t exist.”
Another bill proposed by Scanlon and Moran is aimed at expanding capacity and increasing access and awareness to Ch. 74 programs. “The reason we are even talking about admissions policies is that we have a statewide waitlist of between 6,000-11,000 students and lack the seats needed to meet this demand,” Scanlon said.
The legislation filed along with Moran and Sen. Paul Feeney, D-Foxboro, “would get at the heart of this issue by among other provisions: providing funding for vocational seat expansion, increasing the MSBA reimbursement rate for vocational schools, and ensuring that vocational schools have access to middle school students to make sure they are aware of the opportunities afforded to them in vocational education,” Scanlon said.
He urged others who oppose the proposed regulations to express it in writing to the DESE.
The deadline to submit public comment is 5 p.m., Tuesday, April 18. The board is expected to vote on the proposed amendments at its regular monthly meeting scheduled for Tuesday, May 20.
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