Career and Technical Education

CLE is a key member of the Vocational Educational Justice Coalition, which advocates for equitable educational opportunities for students of color, ELs, students with disabilities, and students from low-income families in career and technical education (“CTE”) schools and programs. The Coalition is composed of twenty Massachusetts community groups, civil rights groups, and labor unions. Working together with members in the Vocational Education Justice Coalition and stakeholders, CLE’s recent “Equity in Career Voc-Tech Education Project” successfully helped to ensure that students from low-income families are not excluded from these highly sought-after schools due to discriminatory selective admissions criteria and have an equal opportunity to attend educational programs with proven track records of producing graduates prepared for high-skill, high-wage careers and / or college. CLE’s multipronged approach included efforts to seek policy changes from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and its board, direct representation on a very extensive complaint to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, technical and substantive assistance requested by a state legislator, communication with the state’s Office of the Attorney General, and ongoing community-based advocacy. Thanks to this advocacy work, the Massachusetts Board of Education voted to adopt a new lottery-based admissions policy to the Commonwealth’s CTE schools.