Voc-tech lottery not a fix all solution

It’s been obvious to the business community and some in the education establishment for a while now there is a need to increase access to a vocational-technical education in our secondary schools.

Tinkering at the margins hasn’t solved the demand for a limited number of technical high school seats.

And admission policies have only exacerbated the problem, which culminated last week in a civil rights complaint filed with the federal Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights against the state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

According to complaint filed by a coalition of educational advocacy groups, state education officials use criteria that allows exclusionary admissions practices at vocational technical schools, leaving behind students of color, English language learners and students with disabilities.

These groups claim DESE allows schools to reject students based on grades, attendance, discipline, and guidance counselor recommendations, which they say disproportionately affects students in protected groups.

The complaint was filed Jan. 31 by Lawyers for Civil Rights and the Center for Law and Education.

It’s on behalf of two students from Gardner — one disabled and the other an English language learner — both denied admission to Montachusett Regional Vocational Technical School, two students from Chelsea, and the Vocational Education Justice Coalition, which consists of 20 community, civil rights, and union groups.

Vocational programs have become increasingly popular in Massachusetts in recent years. In the 2020-2021 school year 18,500 incoming ninth graders applied for 10,616 available seats in the state’s vocational schools, according to the complaint.

The coalition says updated DESE regulations approved in 2021 to address admissions policies “made only minimal changes, and DESE continues to grant Career Vocational Technical Education (CVTE) schools substantial discretion over their admission procedures.”

Those new regulations put the onus on voc-tech schools by requiring them to develop their own admissions policies “that promote equitable access.”

That entailed removing the requirement that grades, attendance, discipline records and counselor recommendations be used as the sole admissions criteria.

Elementary and Secondary Education Commissioner Jeffrey Riley said at the time the new rules would still allow state officials to intervene in cases of non-compliance.

Monty Tech’s admissions criteria is based on a “Total Rating Score,” which places a 25% weight on grades, 20% each on disciplinary history, attendance, and an interview, and 15% on a school recommendation.

While the complaint specifically addresses Fitchburg-based Monty Tech and Northeast Metropolitan Regional Vocational High

School, a similar ranked admissions process is used by 26 of 28 of the state’s vocational schools.

Of the other two, Assabet Valley Regional Technical High School in Marlboro uses a lottery-based system, while Worcester Technical High School uses a modified lottery that places all students with 10 or fewer unexcused absences on equal footing.

The complainants claim the most recent admissions data clearly indicate the updated policies haven’t remedied past inequities.

For the current school year, 55% of students of color who applied to a vocational program were admitted, compared to approximately 69% of white students, and 54% of students from economically disadvantaged families received offers compared to 72% of their peers, the complaint states.

For English learners, 44% who applied were accepted compared to 64% of native English speakers, and 54% of students with disabilities received admissions offers as opposed to a 65% acceptance rate of those not disabled.

While this complaint paints this admissions picture in black and white, we’d say there’s quite a bit of gray in the mix as well.

We believe the substantial lack of vocational school capacity constitutes the overriding problem, especially so in districts containing Gateway Cities like Fitchburg, Lawrence and Lowell.

It’s understandable that due to this high demand for limited seats, schools want to admit students best suited for a technical education.

So, it’s inevitable that many students — especially those from economically disadvantaged communities — will be left out.

DESE has already held reinstituting lotteries over the heads of schools that fail to achieve equitable outcomes, and the data indicated that only the two schools currently using a lottery have passed that test.

However, though lotteries take race, economic status and disabilities out of the equation, they also remove all objective — and subjective — measurements of a student’s likely success.

And unlike mainstream high schools, their CVTE counterparts won’t hesitate to send nonperforming or undisciplined students back to their communities’ public high school.

In truth, there’s no perfect solution to this admissions dilemma, other than expanding technical education opportunities. That can be done organically by building more schools or enlarging current ones, or adding a vocational-technical curriculum into mainstream high schools, especially those serving Gateway Cities.

In the meantime, we suggest that DESE save the time and money involved in fighting this complaint and simply institute a lottery system for vocational school admission.