Opinion: Don’t let vocational school funding hurt marginalized students

As Massachusetts begins its fiscal year 2026 budget process, there are concerning indications it is changing course on the most effective educational investments. With the energy of the Student Opportunity Act waning and a flurry of calls for Millionaires Tax spending, immigrant communities — the fastest-growing contributor to MA school and economic success — should not be left behind.

It is often stated that Massachusetts landmark 1993 education reform law was a brainchild of the state’s business community. Dig deeper, and one will find it was the agency and efforts of students and advocates from Brockton to New Bedford that catalyzed improved equity in school funding. Either way, the link between equity, education and economic progress is clear. As Mark Melnik of the UMass Donohue Institute said in the Globe earlier this year, “the economic story in Massachusetts is very much an immigrant story,” noting that “nearly 80% of the labor force growth in Massachusetts since 1990 is due to gains in foreign-born labor.” 

Nonetheless, if politics is the allocation of scarce resources, then far too much of this year’s education policy energy and funding are focused on a career education model that explicitly excludes immigrant populations, by design. 

Some of MADESE’s own researchers in 2021 showed that this is “primarily due to the state’s use of Regional Vocational Technical Schools (RVTS), which are application-based stand-alone schools” that select and screen applicants. In contrast, the study showed other states’ career tech models (CTE) are far more equitable and effective since “there are almost no students in Tennessee or Washington who have never taken a CTE course.” Massachusetts’ claim to lead the nation in CTE is undone with the slightest look at other states, or when simply considering all students in the commonwealth, particularly those “historically marginalized,” a stated priority in MADESE’s Educational Vision. Since the latest calls for these studies began in 2019, the ratio of students with disabilities, English learners, and students of color has actually fallen, as shown in a Boston Globe analysis on July 18. 

This year, a purported reform has been to offer RVTS even more generous funding. However, Massachusetts already has a bifurcated system with decades of significantly greater funding flowing to these exclusionary schools. Also, even as city districts are left behind by the state building authority, predominantly white RVTS campuses are ranked as better maintained and newer. If the promise is that even more funding will lead to more diverse enrollment, the track record since 2019 shows the opposite: an 8% enrollment increase since then shows a decline in the high-needs and marginalized student bodies served, all as record funding flows to RVTS models.

 In truth, given the restrictions of RVTS models, comprehensive high schools and districts like Lawrence, Brockton, and New Bedford Public Schools will be the true, sustained, broad-based contributors to the workforce of today and tomorrow, to first-generation families and their students.

Growing amid a state demographic decline, comprehensive districts create accessible, enriching, and welcoming environments for the very immigrant population responsible for our state’s economic growth. Classrooms are modeling dual-language programming, culturally and linguistically sustaining practices, alongside our long-unheralded inclusive special education and diverse student pathways to graduation. 

As study after study shows, the workforce of today and tomorrow is diverse, inclusive, and economic growth requires the undoing of legacy inequities. Given the opportunity, our students and families will lead the state’s growth for decades to come. Massachusetts must keep faith with the school systems doing that work in word, deed, and in the application of education funding in next year’s budget.

Andrew B. O’Leary is superintendent of New Bedford Public Schools.