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Our members are the local governments of Massachusetts and their elected and appointed leadership.
Patrick A. Tutwiler
Secretary of Education
Commonwealth of Massachusetts
One Ashburton Place
Boston, MA 02108
Re: Proposed Changes to Vocational Admissions
Dear Secretary Tutwiler:
For nearly a decade, the mayors of Massachusetts have advocated for changes to the admissions process at the Commonwealth’s vocational high schools. In previous letters to both you and your predecessor (dated July 26, 2023, and January 30, 2020, respectively), mayors from across the Commonwealth made the case that the selective admissions policies in place in nearly every vocational high school have resulted in sharply disparate outcomes among students of protected classes and have unfairly excluded students who could have benefitted from a vocational education. Since then, we have been joined in our call for policy change by a chorus of civil rights organizations, legislators, and other stakeholders in Massachusetts. This broad coalition consistently has argued that the only practical and even-handed way to admit students would be through a neutral lottery.
We are encouraged that after years of deferring action, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has recently acknowledged that selective admissions in fact have resulted in unjustified disparities, and the practice should be abolished. In its place, the Department has proposed that the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education adopt a “weighted” lottery, whereby all applicants would be entered into a random lottery, and students without major disciplinary infractions and those with fewer than 27 unexcused absences would each receive an “extra weight” — in effect an extra lottery ticket. Students who satisfy both of these criteria thus would be three times more likely to gain admission than a student who does not.
We are deeply grateful to the Healey-Driscoll Administration’s commitment on this issue, and greatly appreciate the Department’s decision to move in the general direction of a neutral lottery, despite persistent opposition from those who would prefer the status quo. The political headwinds against reform have been daunting, and the Department’s efforts to advance reform required no small measure of resolve. As elected officials, we can appreciate the necessity at times of striking compromises when competing interests are at an impasse, but we must make clear that the decision not to adopt a neutral lottery will leave in place too much of the same problem with selective admissions.
Most significantly, the new policy would reduce the likelihood of admission on the basis of unexcused absences, which tends to overlook the complications in the lives of many children in our cities. As has been widely reported, since the onset of the pandemic, chronic absenteeism has been a front burner issue in our school districts. Despite best efforts of teachers and administrators to promote attendance and proactively reach out to families, chronic absenteeism remains stubbornly high in many of our middle schools. The most cited explanations for this include homelessness, poor access to health care, transportation barriers, and family child care needs. How much any of these or any other variables may account for heightened absenteeism may vary by school, but what they all have in common is that they are factors far beyond the control of a 12- or 13-year-old child.
Even in the more ordinary circumstance in which a student is required to produce a doctor’s note to excuse an absence, it is unrealistic to expect the average middle school student on his or her own to procure the note from a physician. In many of our school districts, it is not uncommon for parents who do not speak English or whose lives are otherwise unstable to not follow through on this responsibility. There also have been instances in which a student who consistently attended elementary school later experiences a family break up, which results in a surge of middle school absences. Even if one chalks this up to poor parenting, under the proposed weighted lottery, it is the child that would suffer a potential long-term consequence for unexcused absences, not the parent.
The application of the proposed rule to students suffering homelessness is particularly troubling. In many of our districts, chronic absenteeism is rampant among students who receive McKinney-Vento benefits, the federal-state program that provides transportation services to students with unstable housing arrangements. The reasons are not hard to imagine. These students — if they have housing at all — often find themselves moving from apartment to apartment over the course of the school year, sometimes outside of their school district. For many of the more than 30,000 children in Massachusetts who experience homelessness, getting to school in the morning can be a challenge. According to a 2024 study by the National Center for Homeless Education, some 36.8% of homeless students in Massachusetts in 2023 were chronically absent. Indeed, DESE’s Guidance for Attendance Policies fully acknowledges this reality: “Children living in poverty are more likely to be chronically absent due to life circumstances such as lack of access to health care, housing insecurity, and unreliable transportation.” Under the proposed policy, the unfortunate circumstances these children live under will render them less likely to be admitted to a vocational high school — adding insult to injury, stymying the realization of their potential, and perpetuating the cycle of poverty.
We have heard some proponents of the status quo contend that it is not appropriate to treat students who unfailingly attend school on equal footing in the admissions process with students who are chronically absent. Naturally, we all agree that our schools should be unequivocal in their messaging about the importance of school attendance, but their argument fails for three reasons:
• First, it continues to tie admission to deservedness, as opposed to whether the curriculum fits a student’s needs and career interests. Vocational schools are public schools, and their mission is to train students who could most benefit from a vocational education, even if they have not thrived in the traditional classroom.
• Second, it implies that attendance is more important to student success at a vocational high school than a comprehensive high school. It is quite obvious that chronic absenteeism is directly correlated with poor academic performance regardless of the curriculum, as countless studies consistently have shown.
• Third, rather than reducing the possibility of admission — and entry to an adult career — to a 13-year-old based on an attendance record not entirely under his or her control, that determination is better made when the student is in high school. An older student can be expected to have greater agency over his or her ability to attend school and be more motivated to take responsibility to do what is necessary to stay on a career track. If the student does not satisfy the high school’s attendance requirements, a school would be more justified at that point for removing the student.1
We are deeply concerned that despite good intentions, the proposed new policy would not bring a lasting resolution to the controversy over vocational admissions. This is rooted in the reality that the new policy attributes full responsibility to the student for his or her middle school attendance record. We predict that vocational school boards and the Department will be forced to reconcile the policy with stories of middle school students who were denied an equal chance at admission because of their experiences with homelessness, family dislocation, and/or trauma. The availability of an appeal process may mitigate some of this risk, but it is unrealistic to assume that families struggling to maintain a stable home have the wherewithal sufficient to navigate such a process, especially those who have been moving across district lines. We fear that the continued use of attendance as an admissions criterion will serve as a proxy for academic performance, which DESE eliminated as an admissions criterion precisely because it led to disparate outcomes.
The best solution to these risks is the same one we have insisted on all along: a neutral lottery. Compromises that fall short of that will inevitably leave in place disparities among protected classes, and give rise to sympathetic stories of students who were unfairly excluded. While we believe that the new policy is better than a selective admissions process, the reform effort to this point remains too incremental. It must take the final steps in order to move the Commonwealth forward.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Mayor Michael Nicholson
Gardner
President, Massachusetts Mayors’ Association
Adam Chapdelaine
Executive Director and CEO,
Massachusetts Municipal Association
Mayor Chris Johnson
Agawam
Mayor Kassandra Gove
Amesbury
Mayor Michael P. Cahill
Beverly
Mayor Robert Sullivan
Brockton
Mayor Nicole LaChapelle
Easthampton
Mayor Carlo DeMaria
Everett
Mayor Paul Coogan
Fall River
Mayor Greg Verga
Gloucester
Mayor Samantha Squailia
Fitchburg
Mayor Virginia DeSorgher
Greenfield
Mayor Melinda Barrett
Haverhill
Mayor Gary Christenson
Malden
Mayor Joshua Garcia
Holyoke
Mayor Jen Grigoraitis
Melrose
Mayor David Beauregard, Jr.
Methuen
Mayor Jon Mitchell
New Bedford
Mayor Ted Bettencourt
Peabody
Mayor Patrick M. Keefe Jr.
Revere
Mayor Dominick Pangallo
Salem
Mayor Katjana Ballantyne
Somerville
Mayor Shaunna O’Connell
Taunton