Vocational-technical school admissions should be based on lottery
In 2003, the same year that passing the MCAS exam became a high school graduation requirement, the state’s vocational-technical schools convinced the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to adopt regulations enabling voc-tech schools to rank order select students using grades, attendance records, discipline records, recommendations, and interviews. Prior to this change, when applicants outnumbered available seats, students were admitted via lottery. This dramatic admissions policy change enabled voc-tech schools to select the highest performing applicants into their schools. Is it any wonder that, by self-selecting their student body, voc-tech schools suddenly became high performing on MCAS tests and other measures?
A return to the lottery system would ensure equal access to voc-tech education. Rather than diminishing the quality of students, a lottery would bring a richer diversity of enrolled students, with a higher percentage of graduates opting to enter the trades and essential businesses that Massachusetts needs for a healthy economy. For example, Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational Technical High School recently adopted a minimum requirements lottery for the first 50 percent of ninth-grade seats. A New Bedford student knew he wouldn’t get a seat in the selective admissions process due to spotty attendance and discipline records so he applied for the lottery and was admitted to the 2022-2023 ninth-grade class. Where he struggled in a traditional academic setting, he is now excelling with hands-on learning experiences.
Federal law prohibits voc-tech schools from using admission criteria that results in disproportionately excluding students from protected classes unless these criteria are proven to be essential and there are no alternative criteria available that don’t disproportionately exclude students.
An admissions policy is discriminatory if eligible students in protected classes perform disproportionately less well on admissions criteria when compared to students from more privileged groups. Students from protected classes disproportionately have lower grades, higher chronic absences, and more frequent discipline. Thus, use of these criteria will screen out students in protected classes at higher rates.
Data on voc-tech schools’ use of selective admissions criteria bears this out. For the entering statewide 2022-2023 ninth-grade class, the percentages of applicant students of color, low-income students, students with disabilities, and English learners offered seats were up to 20 percentage points lower than that of their more privileged peers, with every regional vocational school having disparities.
There is a reason why the North Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters and businesses are members of the Vocational Education Justice Coalition and are calling for lottery admissions. The pipeline to the trades has been drying up as more privileged students enroll in vocational schools and use them as stepping stones to four-year colleges. For example, at Blackstone Valley Regional Vocational Technical High School, 76 percent of the 2021-2022 graduating class enrolled in college, and 90 percent of those collegegoers enrolled in four-year colleges.
In June 2021, due to external pressure, the Board of Education made incremental changes to its voc-tech school admissions regulations, while still allowing selection of applicants using school records, recommendations, and interviews. While the Massachusetts Association of Vocational
Administrators claims 97 percent of vocational schools have made changes to their admissions policies, the disparities in admissions by race, income, disability, and language grew larger when comparing admissions from the 2021-2022 school year with the 2022-2023 school year. These disparities are not surprising given that 27 of 28 regional voc-tech schools continued to use selective criteria to select students.
Statewide, for the 2022 ninth-grade entering class, if the same percent of students from protected classes were offered regional vocational school seats as were represented in the applicant pool, at least 804 students from protected classes, and most likely more, would have been admitted to these schools. If this occurred, there would be a corresponding decrease in the number of more privileged students. In the 20 years of the discriminatory state policy, that’s over 16,000 students from protected classes who have been denied entry into the state’s vocational schools.
A lottery would increase applications from students from protected classes as guidance counselors would urge all students to apply, including those struggling with a traditional education. Lottery admissions would not bar or prevent the nondiscriminatory use of regional agreements or individual lotteries specific to each member town.
The state should increase the number of vocational schools to address current demand, while knowing that any expansion will be many years in the making. However, it is not educational justice if the number of seats is expanded but students from protected classes continue to be disproportionately denied admissions due to discriminatory policies.