Vocational school admissions debate at center of New Bedford stand-off
City Council rejects mayoral appointee to voke school board who favors reform
CRITICS OF VOCATIONAL school admissions in the state are now literally making a federal case of the issue with yesterday’s filing of a civil rights complaint with the US Department of Education alleging discriminatory practices in the admissions policies at Massachusetts vocational high schools.
It’s another step in a long-running debate that started at the local level, and nowhere has that debate been more contentious than in New Bedford, the place where the push to reform state admission policies first began more than five years ago – and where it continues to inflame passions.
State regulations allow vocational schools to rank applicants based on middle school grades, attendance, and other factors. Admission to the schools has become increasingly competitive, with more than 18,000 applicants vying for 10,616 seats in the 2020-21 school year.
Critics have argued that the use of selective admission standards are locking out many of the students who would benefit most from hands-on learning and the pathway the schools provide to a skilled trade career. Those who struggle with traditional classroom academics, they say, are exactly the kind of students for whom vocational schools might be a good fit. Instead, many regional vocational schools in the state have become the preferred choice of college-bound students.
According to the filing, 55 percent of students of color who applied to a regional vocational school this year were accepted, compared with 69 percent of white students. For English learners, the acceptance rate was 44 percent compared with 64 percent of non-English learners. Of students with disabilities, 54 percent were admitted compared with 65 percent of those without disabilities, according to the complaint. For low-income students, the acceptance rate was 54 percent versus 72 percent for students from better-off backgrounds.
New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell has been sounding the alarm over those kinds of disparities for years. The selective admissions criteria are “leaving out in the cold the types of students who had most benefited from vocational education” in the past, Mitchell said in 2017 when he began the push to raise attention to the issue. “Someone who for whatever reason might not have thrived in a mainstream classroom but who could take apart a car—those who fit that profile are the ones who would thrive in a vocational setting, and those types of kids are not getting in now.”
Mitchell has been calling on Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational Technical High School to abandon its use of selective admission criteria. But he’s facing resistance not only from the school, which serves three communities on the South Coast and operates independently of the local school districts, but from New Bedford’s own city council.
The three communities served by the school – New Bedford, Dartmouth, and Fairhaven – get appointees on the vocational school board. But Mitchell’s efforts to name a board member who favors reform of the admission policies have twice been blocked by the city council.
After one nominee was shot down, he put forward another candidate, Carol Pimental, but her nomination was rejected last month in a 5-4 vote. Councilors voting against Pimental made it clear that their vote was based on her support for moving to a lottery admission system that would give all students an equal shot at a voc-tech seat. (New Bedford voc-tech has moved to award a portion of seats by lottery, but critics say that’s not enough.)
Two city councilors were absent for the vote so Pimental’s nomination could be brought back to the council. In any case, Mitchell told New Bedford Light columnist Jack Spillane, he will not put forward any nominee who doesn’t support further admission reforms. “I’m not changing my approach at all,” he said.
Meanwhile, yesterday’s civil rights filing could mean the issue of admission policies at voc-tech schools gets taken out of the hands of local officials.
“A group named the Vocational Education Justice Coalition has already threatened a suit statewide, saying they are not convinced the steps the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education has already taken — which include eliminating minor disciplinary and excused attendance as reasons for penalizing applying students — is enough. They have argued for the lottery system as necessary to address a growing and major inequity in vocational education across the state.”