BOSTON — The state Board of Early and Secondary Education is preparing to reexamine the admissions process for vocational technical high schools, three years after they overhauled their regulations to promote more “equitable access” to the career-oriented schools.
Demand at the state’s vocational schools far outpaces the available space, as more and more students and families are seeing career-driven high school education as a pathway to steady, well-paying jobs.
The board voted in 2021 to reform the admissions process for vocational schools and districts, after advocates said policies disproportionately excluded students of color and those who were learning English, had disabilities or came from low-income families. Those changes removed requirements that grades, attendance, discipline records and counselor recommendations had to be used as admissions criteria.
The board held a special meeting on Monday night, and has another scheduled next month, to “discuss the impact of these regulatory changes” and “address a key question: What impact has the most recent regulation change had on addressing equitable access to (career technical education) admissions?” according to a meeting agenda.
The agenda adds that the information discussed at the meetings, “will contribute to any further changes to state regulations.”
The regulation changes ended the requirement that vocational technical schools use criteria such as disciplinary records; it did not, however, ban their use. The reforms did soften some of the selective criteria, for example, career technical schools now can only count non-excused absences against an applicant, and only suspensions of 10 days or more count against them.
Of the 29 career technical districts in Massachusetts, 25 kept selective criteria in their admissions process after 2021 — meaning, they still use information such as grades, attendance and discipline records from middle school to choose which applicants should come to their high school programs. Most still require a recommendation or an interview, according to a presentation given at the Monday meeting.
Many adjusted how they score, or shifted the weight assigned to criteria under the 2021 reforms.
In February 2023, Lawyers for Civil Rights and Center for Law and Education filed a civil rights complaint arguing that the process for admitting students into the limited slots was still not fair, and still disproportionately prioritized white, higher-income, English speaking students. Low-income students, students of color, students with disabilities, and English language learners are more likely to be disciplined at school and be absent for long periods of time.
They urged the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to implement a lottery system, which would randomly select which of the 8th grade students who applied to a vocational school got to attend.
“The changes that BESE introduced in June 2021, fell short. While these revisions mirrored federal civil rights standards on paper, they failed to make meaningful changes in practice,” said Lawyers for Civil Rights attorney Mirian Albert at a board meeting on Tuesday. “Vocational schools are still permitted to rank applicants based on grades, attendance, disciplinary records and recommendations — criteria that research in three years of DESE’s own data shows disproportionately excludes students from protected classes.”
Two of the 29 career technical education districts in the state opted to adopt a full or partial lottery system to admit students after 2021, and two agricultural schools fully removed grades and recommendations as selective criteria.
Shaun Dougherty, an education and policy professor at Boston College, gave a presentation to the board Monday night on research comparing a random lottery system to selecting students for the schools.
He ran a simulation based on Massachusetts’s vocational school’s 2019’s admissions data, and found that random admission generates more equitable access among demographic groups.
His study also found that students with similar grades going into high school had vastly different outcomes based on their admittance into a vocational technical school. Those who were admitted into a career program had a 5 percentage point higher chance of graduating, and significantly higher earnings after graduation.
Board members had plenty of questions for Dougherty, but they held back on outwardly sharing their opinions on whether further reform of the system is needed.
On Tuesday morning, however, advocates from both sides of the debate came to the board meeting in Everett to share their opinions.
Albert reinforced Lawyers for Civil Right’s view that a lottery is the only fair way to offer opportunities when seats are limited.
Sky Kochenour from the Center for Law and Education, who filed the 2023 complaint alongside LCR, said, “I’m very heartened that DESE and the board are seriously revisiting the critical issue of equity and admission.”
A number of superintendents of vocational schools also came to speak, sharing their view that using selective criteria is important.
“Our schools only consider the most serious disciplinary offenses. In the absence of such criteria, our vocational community would have concerns. Attendance: we cannot send tutors home with large equipment. Students cannot succeed in co-op programs if they are not present and can’t earn credentials without the requisite number of hours,” said Aaron Polansky, superintendent of Old Colony Regional Vocational Technical in Rochester.
Others argued that they have taken measures to make admissions more equitable, like using data to analyze potential bias. Jonathan Evans, superintendent of Keefe Regional Technical School in Framingham, said he has concerns about a blind admissions lottery for his school, which services five different communities: Ashland, Framingham, Holliston, Hopkinton and Natick.
Currently, he said the regional school does not have a minimum designated number of seats for any one of its member communities, but may need to implement that policy if required to do a blind lottery.
“A possible outcome of a regional agreement with apportionment would be that all applicants from our smallest and least diverse communities would all receive acceptance offers. A blind lottery would only apply to our one very diverse city. In our case, implementation of a blind lottery could very well result in the opposite of what proponents of a lottery and we seek to achieve,” Evans said.
The board of education’s next special meeting on vocational school admissions is Nov. 18.
