VTE - Op-Ed

HANDS-ON EDUCATION plays a critical role at Massachusetts regional vocational-technical high schools, where students alternate weekly between academics and shop classes. Given that reality, you’d think the schools would be particularly hard hit by the switch to hybrid models under which students are in a physical school building only half the time. But thanks to innovative approaches to coping with pandemic-related restrictions, voc-techs are successfully bucking statewide public-school enrollment trends.

For more than 25 years, Massachusetts vocational-technical high schools have done everything state officials have asked of them. Instead of moving the goal posts by compelling them to switch to a lottery system, we should expand the schools. 

This op-ed appeared in Commonwealth Magazine and New Bedford Standard Times. A recent visit to Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational Technical High School demonstrated why career and technical high schools are rightly considered a Massachusetts success story. But it also serves as...

Read this full op-ed in CommonWealth magazine. By Tom Birmingham and Ken Campbell Years of missteps are leaving students behind “SUCCESS IS TO BE measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life,” said Booker T. Washington, the famous turn-of-the-20th-century...

Read this entire op-ed online at CommonWealth Magazine, the New Bedford Standard Times, The Berkshire Eagle, and The Salem News. Written by Tom Birmingham MASSACHUSETTS VOCATIONAL-TECHNICAL high schools are like the person who toils for years, only to be termed an “overnight sensation” when...

There are three proven ways to reduce dropout rates that address this problem: regional vocational-technical schools, digital learning, and a serious refocusing on academic learning.

http://boston.com/community/blogs/rock_the_schoolhouse/2012/06/a_big_test_at_madison_park_voc.html In fact, it is arguable that the 2010 legislation provides even less flexibility than the enabling Horace Mann charter statute (1997).  The 2010 law takes dozens of pages to describe the meaning flexibility available to (and the laundry list of processes...

http://www.berkshireeagle.com/editorials/ci_20250784/pivotal-role-vocational-education According to U.S. Department of Labor statistics, the stagnant manufacturing industry has enjoyed a comeback in the state and nation, and the main factor jeopardizing that growth is a lack of skilled labor. The decline of the industry created a gap...