2025 3.1.2025 • Wall Street Journal: The Schools Reviving Shop Class Offer a Hedge Against the AI Future Hands-on skills are staging a comeback at leading-edge districts, driven by high college costs and demand for more career choices 3.6.2025 • Contrarian Boston: Political pressure drives state ed officials’ call for voke admissions lottery By David MancusoWith their latest bumbling and fumbling with vocational school admissions policies, state education officials continue to cling to an unnecessary admissions lottery. 3.11.2025 • Commonwealth Beacon: Voc-tech schools need support to build tomorrow’s workforce We need to add more seats to meet the demand from students — and employers 3.12.25 • Franklin Observer: What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Education officials agreed Monday to seek public feedback on updated regulations that allow more students with serious discipline problems and chronic unexcused absences to be admitted to the state's expensive and overburdened vocational (aka career technical education) schools. The 'reformed' system incorporates a weighted lottery system into the admissions process for vocational schools, after advocates decried a previous proposal they argued could still limit access for students from lower-income communities. 3.13.25 • Franklin Observer • Supt. Karen Maguire Seeks Public Help to Preserve Tri-County Voc Following Observer's coverage of the state's Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE)'s radical new admission requirements for vocational schools (What Could Possibly Go Wrong?), Tri-County Regional Vocational Technical School Superintendent, Dr. Karen Maguire reached out. 3.29.2025 • The Sun Chronicle: Proposed lottery for vocational and technical school admissions opposed by Attleboro area school administrators, local state rep By Susan LaHoudA number of area superintendents and a local state rep are opposed to newly-proposed rules by the state Department of Education on the creation of a lottery system for vocational and technical school admissions. 2024 5.3.2024 • Franklin Observer: Study Says Build More Voc Schools, Don't Change Admission Policy State policy makers should address an underlying access problem by expanding the number of seats in Massachusetts vocational-technical high schools rather than changing the schools’ admissions policies, according to a new study published by Pioneer Institute. 11.20.2024 • Commonwealth Beacon: Vocational admissions debate getting heated State ed board weighing changes in face of ongoing acceptance disparities
