Voke ed experts: An admissions lottery would undercut local control of regional voke schools putting community finances and student access at risk

First appeared in Contrarian Boston 12.13.24

By David Mancuso

A blind admissions lottery would gut critical local control over the regional vocational schools.

And that, in turn, would undermine the financial and academic foundation of what makes Massachusetts’ vocational education model the envy of the nation, voke school experts tell Contrarian Boston.

Massachusetts vocational schools are organized and governed around local agreements that are unique to public education.

Jason Fraser, Massachusetts Association of School Committees president-elect, as well as a member of the Silverlake School Committee, didn’t mince words.

“A lottery devastates the regional agreements that have been established,” Fraser told Contrarian Boston. “It will take seats away from towns that have had skin in the game for decades.”

Regional agreements underpin the state’s vocational education system, establishing a proportionally fair division of operating and capital costs, and in some cases allocating student access to voke schools between communities of different sizes within a regional district.

Functionally, the agreements ensure financial predictability and stability for both municipalities and vocational schools, while preventing larger cities from sucking up scarce voke seats at the expense of students in smaller towns, experts say.

Steve Sharek, Massachusetts Association of Vocational School Administrators’ executive director warned: “Throwing all their students into the same lottery would likely lead to massive enrollment and assessment increases for the cities...and lower or no enrollment for the little towns.”

Consider Montachusett Regional Technical Vocational School, which serves 18 communities, ranging from Fitchburg with a population of 42,000, down to tiny Petersham with less than 1,200 people.

Monty Tech’s agreement apportions both cost sharing and seats to each community in the regional district.

With a blind lottery overriding the local agreement it would likely be a cold day in hades before tiny Petersham would overcome the odds to score seats for its students over Fitchburg, despite the hamlet continuing to pay for the privilege to do so under their regional agreement.

A lottery would also very likely suppress, if not eliminate the creation of new vocational programs and schools at the very time they are desperately needed.

What community in its right mind would risk financing resources to create the programs, let alone a new school to address soaring demand for a vocational education, if there is no guarantee its investment will yield both predictable expenses and sufficient seats for that community’s students?

Put the stability of regional agreements at risk and you put the proven connection between education and the workforce pipeline at risk too.

“(Voke) Schools need to demonstrate (to the state) that there's a labor market demand, in their region, for the Chapter 74 program that they seek to operate,” said MAVA’s Sharek.

Furthermore, Perkins grants, $13 million of which the state has received in 2024 from the federal government to strengthen career and technical education, also require vocational schools to show their programs are connected to the workforce pipeline.

To Fraser, saying a lottery would shred the vokes’ ability to feed the workforce pipeline is an understatement.

“That’s not even close to how bad it would be.”

“Others seem oblivious to this, even though we have addressed the issue repeatedly,” added Sharek.

“Others” likely include the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education which seems befuddled with a sketchy understanding of the complexities of regional agreements, let alone how a lottery would affect them.

A DESE spokesperson told Contrarian Boston, “Lottery admissions would not necessarily cause financial changes to individual member towns,” adding “potentially changing to a lottery would not change how a regional CTE district allocates seats…”

Not necessarily? Potentially? Hedging language like that doesn’t impart confidence that DESE fully grasps what it’s talking about, raising a red flag for guidance it may offer on the issue.

Fortunately, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education has expressed interest in taking a deeper dive into the impact of a lottery on regional voke agreements.

Hopefully BESE will keep the Healey-Driscoll administration from a self-inflicted wound that would simultaneously damage the state’s lauded vocational education system, and the workforce pipeline that fuels the economy in the name of political expedience, rather than excellence in vocational education.

#vocationaleducation #workforcepipeline #MAVA #MASC #education #workforcedevelopment