MAVA Colleagues,
We are forwarding this piece published today in the “Boston Globe”.
David
Mass. House moves to block vocational school lottery admissions
By Christopher Huffaker Globe Staff,Updated May 2, 2025, 4:09 a.m.
Regional trade schools like Greater Lawrence Tech have sought to expand capacity to meet demand, but many still use selective admissions processes. State leaders are facing off over a proposal to require lotteries.
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff
The Massachusetts Legislature is considering blocking a proposed change to lottery admissions for the state’s popular trade high schools, even as other power brokers in the state have lined up on the other side.
State education leaders had taken steps to move to lottery-based admissions following criticism by advocates who argue the existing admissions process locks many marginalized students out. But after lobbying efforts from some of the vocational schools themselves, Massachusetts House lawmakers have now taken actionto prohibit the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education from making any admissions changes before the 2027-28 school year and instead create a new task force to further study the issue.
The measures were part of the budget passed by the House Wednesday. The House budget and the governor’s proposal now go to the state Senate for consideration. Even if the Senate does not include the admissions system freeze in its budget, it will be part of the budget the House brings to conference committee negotiations later in the process.
The state school board is slated to vote May 20 on a proposed change to a lottery system, after months of discussion and a public comment period that recently closed.
The dueling plans follow years of growth at the state’s 28 regional trade schools, which today educate about 30,000 students but are at capacity. Last year, more than 8,500 middle-schoolers, or about 42 percent, out of roughly 20,300 applicants were denied admission, putting the admissions process in the spotlight. Advocates of the proposed change argue the schools’ current selective admissions policies are discriminatory against low-income students, students with disabilities, English learners, and students of color.
The House measure has a way to go before it would becomelaw, including surviving the line-item veto of the governor, whose administration proposed the new lotto system in the first place. But advocates are taking it seriously and hope the Senate will not follow the House’s lead, said Lewis Finfer of the Vocational Education Justice Coalition, which includes many civil rights, community, and union organizations.
“This is the most serious stage that counterattack has gotten to,” Finfer said. “They want to keep the status quo where they get to pick their students and rank them.”
Supporters of a pause, including the schools’ administrators association and legislators like state RepresentativeFrank Moran, argue the change could have unintended consequences and needs more scrutiny.
“While I believe that the proposal put forth by the board was well intentioned, I am worried that moving to a lottery-based admissions system will widen the educational equity gap for underserved students,” Moran said in an email. “Especially given the amount of public comment that has been submitted to the board opposing this measure, it is time to take a step back and put a productive pause on this matter.”
The state education department’s proposed regulation would bar career-technical schools from ranking students based on selective criteria like grades, recommendations from guidance counselors, and personal interviews. Instead, they would be limited to using attendance and discipline as weights in an admissions lottery and some indication of interest, such as attending an information session, as an eligibility criterion.
Governor Maura Healey’s administration proposed in February the change to a lottery system. The first proposal used attendance and discipline as initial screening criteria, rather than using them as weights in the lottery, and did not include expressions of interest at all. The current version was introduced in March.
“Maintaining the status quo is not an option,” Education Secretary Patrick Tutwiler said in a statement. “After many, many months of Board meetings, conversations, and public comment, we are eager to move forward with the Board in May.”
Critics have argued the students who are unlikely to attend college and are most in need of such training are being displaced by high-performing students who already plan to seek higher education.
Last year, a Globe analysis of recently published admissions data comparing applicants with admitted students found the system disproportionately denies marginalized students access to vocational education. Students from low-income families, for example, were more likely to apply to the schools than their more advantaged peers, but about 30 percent less likely to be accepted.
The Massachusetts Association of Vocational Administrators has consistently argued against a statewide lottery requirement, disputing the validity of the admissions data and emphasizing the need to expand the number of seats available. The association also argues the proper comparison is between the demographics of the vocational schools and their sending districts; by that measure, the schools’ admissions look much better, and existing rules allow the state to intervene with schools that do not.
“We believe that it’s a targeted issue in certain districts across the state,” said Steven Sharek, the association’s executive director. “That’s a different problem entirely, and one that could be solved right now by the existing regulations.”
The association notes the state’s federally approved standard for monitoring the schools for civil rights violations matches its preferred demographic comparison; state officials said the state can go beyond that standard and consider other data in making policy.
Advocates of a lottery are not entirely happy with the administration’s proposal either, though they see it as an important step. Attorney General Andrea Campbell, for example, wrote a letter to the education board in April urging them to remove the attendance and discipline weights from the lottery, among other changes.
“I urge the Board to act with urgency to finalize the proposed regulations,” she wrote. “I also respectfully recommend the following additional refinements to the regulations to ensure that barriers to enrollment do not disproportionately exclude our most vulnerable students, particularly given the significant impacts of federal actions on these students in our Commonwealth.”
On the need for more seats, all sides agree, and on that issue too there is legislation working its way through the State House, including Healey seeking to provide $75 million in grants for schools that offer career programs to expand.