Today, every sector of industry — healthcare, manufacturing, the building trades, life sciences — is sounding the alarm of the existential threat to our economy if the state fails to meaningfully address our workforce shortage. That is why the Commonwealth needs to critically reexamine how career and vocational high schools are aligned with local and regional workforce demands, especially considering the many voices calling for significant new investments in workforce development programming.
For the 2022-2023 school year, 22,071 eighth grade students applied for 10,533 ninth grade seats at the state’s career and vocational high schools. Twenty seven of 28 schools rank ordered students using selective admissions criteria that discriminated against the most vulnerable eighth graders in the state: economically disadvantaged students, English language learners, students with a disability, and students of color. The results of these admissions policies create measurable harm to our communities by excluding the very students that would both benefit the most from a non-traditional academic environment and be the most likely to utilize their trade immediately after graduation in the workforce.
Fix the equity crisis in vocational high school admissions and ‘demand’ will recalibrate
The “demand” for career and vocational education seats is artificial. That is, many eighth graders (and their parents) that apply to vocational schools across the state don’t expect or plan to utilize a trade when they graduate. Rather, they are attracted to apply to vocational schools due to their academic prestige, buttressed by 20 years of selective admissions policies that admit top performing students first.
To be clear, we should be proud that thousands of vocational school graduates matriculate to outstanding four-year colleges each year. We should not be proud that our vocational school systems cherry-pick these top performing academic students for competitive seats to the detriment of students from disadvantaged backgrounds that will not pursue higher education after high school. As a result, a growing number of high school graduates from economically disadvantaged backgrounds—who face the highest barriers to higher education—enter the labor force without any access to career and vocational training.
The mission of our trade schools must not be to serve as preparatory academies for college bound students (who happen to be more affluent than their peers denied admission).
Replacing the current selective criteria admissions regime with a lottery system would fix current inequities by restoring a basic principle of fairness to the state’s admissions system: every 8th grader that applies to a vocational school will have the same chance of getting in as the next. In last year’s admissions cycle, schools that adopted a lottery for the first time (Assabet Valley, Worcester Tech) meaningfully closed opportunity gaps in admissions between protected classes of students and their peers.
Lotteries worked.
Once vocational schools cease to be magnets for top-performing college bound students through selective admissions, applicant demand will more closely reflect students that want to pursue vocational education for their more imminent career aspirations. High performing academic students will be more attracted to the AP and honors programs at their comprehensive high schools. In this respect, lotteries will work to restore in practice the historical mission of our trade schools: to train and deliver the indispensable local and regional skilled workforce of tomorrow to our communities.
Build vocational capacity in comprehensive high schools
While policymakers debate whether to reform vocational school admissions, we still desperately need more vocational programming capacity. To build it, let’s get the trades back in our comprehensive high schools in a meaningful way. New dollars to career and vocational education should be specifically targeted to non-college bound high school juniors and seniors that want to learn a trade but currently cannot access training. The cost of building one new trade school is $400 million. Imagine the economic opportunity we could create by taking that same investment and spreading it across each of the state’s 26 Gateway Cities to build vocational training capacity at existing high schools — the space, equipment, and human capital — to create pathways into the trades for kids headed directly into the labor force after graduation. The state can administer these grants and keep the burden off taxpayers in economically depressed areas of the state.
By ending discrimination in current vocational school admissions and prioritizing new dollars in vocational programming toward comprehensive high schools, the state can spur social mobility and create economic opportunity that better meets the workforce demands of a competitive 21st century economy. Let’s get to work.
John Cronin serves as the state senator for the Worcester & Middlesex District. Michael Kushmerek is the state representative for the 3rd Worcester District.
