Acceptance letters to Massachusetts’ vocational schools have become sought-after prizes. Voke schools? Why on earth?

Because they’re really good.

According to a recent report by the Pioneer Institute, the 26 stand-alone vocational high schools have, on average, considerably lower drop-out rates than the comprehensive high schools. And their test scores (on the MCAS) are also above the state average. Since 2001, their MCAS (Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System) scores have risen 40 points. Huge. In places like Worcester, the vocational school is the highest scorer in the district.

Yep. This is the same voke-ed that used to be considered nonacademic shop classes for the boneheads.

Furthermore, to cite a specific example, at Diman Regional Vocational High School in Fall River, 60 percent of the kids typically go on to college. One year the college-bound rate was 80 percent.

But this success is new. Before the 1993 Education Reform Act, maybe 5 percent of Diman’s kids went to college, 10 in a really good year.

Rogerio Ramos, principal of Diman, and David Ferreira, executive director of the Massachusetts Vocational Association, were both science teachers at Diman, back in the day. By 1993 Ramos had become Diman’s assistant principal and Ferreira the principal of Old Colony Vocational Technical School, in Rochester, Mass. They’ve seen the “before,” lived through the change, and are thrilled with the “after.”

Ramos acknowledges, “We do very well, because of ed reform.”

The 1993 reform law mandated that all students would eventually have to pass a series of state tests to earn a high-school diploma. But the law also mandated establishing standards of “occupational” (vocational) proficiency. Not unreasonably, the vocational schools assumed that their students would not take the same tests designed for the comprehensives, but would be assessed by these other standards. Which, by the way, never were developed.

In 2001, the state piloted the MCAS. And lo, the testing materials arrived at Diman and all the other vocational schools. They protested vehemently. The state’s response was essentially: Tough darts. Go back and teach your kids.

Back then, vocational education was thought of as an alternative education for kids not usually successful in school. Ferreira concedes that prior to reform, “We downplayed academics and sold the school as occupational training. But as science teachers, it was easy to see how to teach academics through the trades, because they are science-based. So, the answer to “why do I need to know this stuff” is staring you in the face. Physics was easy to teach to machine and auto mechanics. It was about heat, materials.”

But the shop teachers certainly didn’t want to teach reading. When would they teach the trade? I’m not a math teacher, I’m a mechanic, they complained. Ramos muses, “People were not happy.”

Diman has 40 weeks of instruction per year — 20 academic and 20 concentrating on the trade. Kids go to conventional core classes for two weeks, and then go to their electronics or graphic communications classes for two weeks. With a full two weeks, a kid can actually build something in machine shop from beginning to end, or finish work on a car. Also, two kids in the upper classes, on opposite two-week cycles, can share an internship job in the service department at a car dealership.

Before reform, the kids loved not having homework during the trade cycle. But now, says Ramos, “When they leave academics to do [trade] cycle, they have to do academic work. They do homework. They do reading over the summer. They hate me.” But Diman’s scores in 2001 were dismal, so it was up to everyone to reinforce reading, math, writing. That meant integrating academics into shop time.

Per usual, over time, the shop teachers got with the program as a result of spoon feeding, coercion, retirements and setting higher academic standards for new teachers. Partly because of how the industries themselves have evolved, applicant teachers now often have master’s and other degrees. Electronics manuals require a college reading level, so a shop teacher can’t afford to have a kid stumbling in his reading.

With the voke schools’ growing success, parents and teachers have let go of the old image of the dummie classes in shop. Thousands of students are on the waiting lists because the odds of getting into college are higher at the voke schools.

Alison Fraser, author of the Pioneer report, writes, “Often praised as more prepared and capable by industry professionals, VTE (Vocational-Technical Education) graduates leave high school better equipped than most college-preparatory students.”

Next week we’ll look at the students’ experience of what these successful schools are doing right. Other states need to take notice.

Julia Steiny, a former member of the Providence School Board, consults for government agencies and schools; she is co-director of Information Works!, Rhode Island’s school-accountability project. She can be reached at juliasteiny@cox.net , or c/o EdWatch, The Providence Journal, 75 Fountain St., Providence, RI 02902.