PREP SCHOOL CLAIM SPECIOUS

While I applaud Michael Jonas’s commitment to presenting all sides of the ongoing debate that surrounds  the operation and performance of Massachusetts’s public vocational- technical high schools, I must respond to some of the opinions shared in the article (“Voc-tech tension,” Spring 2017).

The idea that the Commonwealth’s public vocational schools are operating like “elite prep schools” is both specious and misleading. The statement not only reinforces the classist notion that vocational-technical schools are, in fact, for those students who do not excel at “book learning,” but it overlooks a primary challenge facing our vocational-technical schools: capacity.

This year, Diman Regional Vocational Technical High School, which serves the South Coast communities of Fall River, Somerset, Swansea, and Westport, received 654 applications for admission to the graduating class of 2021. Close to 300 of those applicants were turned away, as so many are each year, for one reason only: our 49-year-old school building can no longer accommodate the volume of students interested in multi-disciplinary education.

As Jonas points out, the model of professional education is working. Rather than frame the discussion as vocational schools being the “victims of their own success,” let us remove barriers to inclusion and increase capacity to deliver high-quality education to all interested students.

Let me be clear: increasing capacity does not mean diffusion. Comprehensive schools play a critical role in our educational ecosystem, but they should not be used to seemingly expand access to vocational education, when these investments merely dilute the resources available to specialized, professionally staffed vocational schools whose students graduate with industry-standard certifications.

There is no right or wrong type of vocational-technical student, and education is not a one-size-fits-all endeavor. I urge my colleagues at all levels of the Commonwealth to align investment with demand and to empower our vocational experts to make good on their promise to provide professional education to all students.

Thomas F. Aubin
Superintendent-Director
Diman Regional Vocational
Technical High School
Fall River

 

MORE SEATS FOR VOC SCHOOLS

Thank you for the thoughtful, complex coverage of vocational high schools.  This is an important issue for the Commonwealth and it is encouraging to see it getting the attention it deserves. The trends and dynamics you describe are consistent with what I have observed over the past eight years serving as an assistant principal at Hudson High School.

At the end of the article, you quote Tim Murray of the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce, who asks, “How do we increase access rather than continue fighting over a limited number of seats?” It is the right question and should prompt us to consider increasing the number of seats at vocational schools.  For the reasons discussed in the article, adding more career and technical programs to traditional high schools is probably not a sufficient response to the problem. Most vocational schools offer an alternative model from traditional schools, not just the different program offerings.

If the demand for the vocational schools (and their alternative model) exceeds current supply, why not expand supply? This is no doubt costly but the return on investments in vocational education may be very high. The costs of failing to do so are likely higher. When young people enter the labor market after high school having not received adequate vocational training, their individual prospects are typically very poor and the impacts on communities and future generations can be profoundly negative.

Joshua Otlin
Assistant Principal
Hudson High School

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