ADDING PRESSURE ON an issue that earlier this year drew a formal civil rights complaint to the US Department of Education, more than two dozen lawmakers wrote to Gov. Maura Healey yesterday, urging her to direct the state board of education to end the practice of using selective entry standards at the state’s vocational high schools and instead admit students by lottery.
Vocational school admission policies have been under fire for years, as critics have argued that they are locking out some of the students who might benefit most from the hands-on learning and applied skills taught at the schools.
The schools are allowed to rank applicants based on middle school grades, attendance, and discipline records. Under that scoring system, critics say three groups with protected status under federal civil rights law – students of color, English language learners, and special needs students – as well as low-income students are accepted at voc-tech schools at lower rates than peers not in those groups.
The state responded to the criticism two years ago by making some adjustments to the admission regulations, but critics say the changes have done little to alter the discriminatory practices.
“In fact, since the 2021 regulation change, admission rates for these four classes of students lowered, and opportunity gaps (the difference in percent offered admission between protected and non-protected applicant) grew wider. In every measurable equity metric, the Commonwealth is moving in the wrong direction,” says the letter to Healey from Sen. John Cronin of Fitchburg and Rep. Antonio Cabral of New Bedford, co-chairs of the Gateway Cities Legislative Caucus. It was co-signed by 24 lawmakers, including Senate education committee chair Jason Lewis and the Senate budget chief, Michael Rodrigues.
According to data compiled by the Vocational Education Justice Coalition, an organization of community and civil rights groups pushing for admission changes, for the 2022-23 school year, 55 percent of students of color who applied to voc-tech schools were admitted, down from 62 percent the prior year, and 14 points lower than the 69 percent of White applicants who were accepted. Among low-income students, 54 percent of applicants were accepted compared with 72 percent of those from better-off homes.
Cronin said he began circulating the letter for colleagues to sign in late September. In the meantime, Rep. Frank Moran of Lawrence drafted a letter to Healey pushing back on the call for an admissions lottery at voc-tech schools and urging the state to maintain the current system.
Moran’s December 4 letter to Healey, co-signed by 12 lawmakers, says the 2021 changes in state regulations are “yielding progress” and that the demographic make-up of regional vocational schools largely mirrors that of the sending districts.
Critics say the relevant figures are the lower acceptance rates among applicants from the four groups, not the overall demographics of the districts or schools.
“We believe children who grow up in poverty in Massachusetts—thousands of whom live in Gateway Cities—deserve the same opportunity to attend a vocational school” as other students, says the letter from Cronin and Cabral.
Moran, who attended Greater Lawrence Technical School, said the real solution is to expand the number of vocational seats in the state to accommodate the thousands of students who end up denied admission. “A lottery is not going to fix the problem,” he said.
He pushed back on the idea that the vocational admission policies were harming minority applicants and student populations. “I don’t really know where they’re getting these numbers,” Moran said of the data showing big disparities in admission rates for the four disadvantaged student groups.
Lew Finfer of the Vocational Education Justice Coalition said they come from data reported by the schools to the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
Finfer said the arguments in Moran’s letter mirror those that have been made by the state vocational school association, which has resisted calls to abandon the use of selective admission criteria.
In a confusing twist in the admissions debate, three of the same lawmakers who signed the letter delivered to Healey yesterday urging changes in admission policy also signed the letter Moran sent to the governor earlier this month arguing against change.
One of them, Sen. Liz Miranda of Boston, said yesterday that she supports ending the use of selective criteria and called her endorsement of the earlier letter a mistake. “The sign-on to Rep. Moran’s letter was in error,” she said, adding that a lottery system would bring “improvements in our collective goal of closing opportunity gaps.”
The two other lawmakers who signed both letters, Rep. Judith Garcia of Chelsea and Rep. Rita Mendes of Brockton, did not return messages on Wednesday.
Healey spokeswoman Karissa Hand said the administration is “committed to ensuring equitable access to vocational schools in Massachusetts” and is “engaging with stakeholders on this issue.”
The state has nearly doubled the number of vocational high school seats over the last decade, with more than 10,000 seats now available, said Cronin. But there continues to be far higher demand than supply, with about 1.75 applicants for every seat.
Finfer said an analysis of disparities in admission rates shows that about 1,000 more students from the four disadvantaged groups would gain admission to vocational schools every year if a lottery were used in place of the selective entry standards now in place.
“It’s putting a number on it rather than just saying it would be fairer,” he said of a lottery. “That’s a significant number of lives that would be different.”