Can more – In Connecticut’s technical high schools, boys make up about 70% of enrollment and appear to benefit more than girls, but demand is outstripping capacity and admission rules have sparked civil-rights disputes. Policymakers are now weighing whether to build cost
In Danielson, Conn., the carpentry classroom at Harvard H. Ellis Technical High School is loud enough to make conversation difficult. Three dozen sophomores and juniors work with saws buzzing, hammers clanking, and sandpaper scratching. For Julian Lawrence, 16, the noise is part of the point.
“I hated sitting at a desk every day” in middle school, Lawrence said. Now, he’s earning straight A’s and says he’s excited to come to class each day because “This gets my mind moving more.”
The atmosphere Ellis Tech creates is drawing boys in particular.. In one carpentry room. only two of 36 students are girls—an enrollment pattern that mirrors what advocates describe as the gender makeup of the carpentry workforce.. While some other trades at Ellis Tech skew female. like hairdressing and health care technology. the school’s overall student body is 70 percent male.. Across Connecticut, more than 60 percent of the roughly 11,000 students attending technical high schools are boys.
Advocates point to research suggesting boys, more than girls, are getting a bigger boost from the model.. In one frequently cited study of Connecticut’s technical schools. boys accepted into the programs were found to have better attendance and test scores. along with higher graduation rates and earnings than peers who just missed the cutoff for admission.. Girls who were admitted did well, too—but were no better off than their rejected peers.
Yet the same evidence sits inside a different problem: many boys who might thrive are not getting in.. This year, only 44 percent of the 7,850 applicants to the state’s 17 technical high schools were admitted.. Those schools enrolled 11,700 students this year, leaving families and students competing for limited seats.
The pressure has spilled beyond Connecticut. Both Connecticut and neighboring Massachusetts have recently switched from competitive admissions to a lottery, after allegations that their earlier systems were shutting out at-risk students.
That shift has fueled a larger debate: if technical high schools can help narrow achievement gaps for boys. should states build more of them?. Richard Reeves. president of the American Institute for Boys and Men. argues yes. saying. “We could add 1. 000 more and it would be good for boys. not bad for girls. and give parents more choices.” Reeves’ Rise Together fund is one of the donors to The Hechinger Report and Big Local News. which together produced this story.
But scaling up quickly is expensive. Reeves estimates the cost of running 1,000 additional schools at $4 billion annually, basing the figure on Connecticut’s $5,000 per-student supplement for technical school students. That estimate doesn’t include construction costs.
For districts facing tight budgets, skeptics question whether there are cheaper ways to expand technical education to more boys. Options mentioned include renting space so existing programs can grow, or opening vocational classrooms to students from traditional schools during nights or weekends.
Career and technical education is no longer commonly described as a last stop for students failing in traditional schools.. Many students and families now see it as a debt-free route into “family-sustaining careers. ” as policymakers and business leaders often frame it.. They also tie career and technical education to the skilled workforce and the nation’s economic competitiveness—especially as artificial intelligence automates some white-collar work.
Still, the strongest case for building more technical schools depends on a limited research base.. Shaun Dougherty. a professor of education and policy at Boston College and one of the authors of the Connecticut study. said the schools have been studied most heavily because full-time stand-alone models make it easier for researchers to create matched control groups of similar students who weren’t admitted.. Dougherty added that comparisons are harder for students who choose “school within a school” programs in comprehensive high schools. because those students may differ in meaningful ways.
Even so. the case for new construction isn’t “airtight.” The article notes that only a handful of rigorous studies exist. and none has followed students long term.. It also says there is little or no research comparing outcomes for students across different career-education models. making it difficult to say whether spending millions on new schools is worth the cost.
Even with those gaps, advocates say the evidence that does exist is encouraging.. They point to the Connecticut findings and a recent evaluation of New York City’s P-TECH schools showing that males who attended the vocationally oriented programs were 10 percentage points more likely to have completed an associate degree seven years after enrolling than peers who weren’t admitted.. That evaluation, like the Connecticut study, found no significant gains for females.
A Big Local News/Hechinger Report analysis of overall graduation rates found that students graduated from CTE high schools in Connecticut and Massachusetts at higher rates than regular high schools, regardless of gender. But the differences were bigger for boys.
The article also reports that researchers aren’t sure why boys get a bigger boost from attending technical high schools. though Dougherty points to one theory: boys may have more room to grow than girls. who tend to do pretty well in traditional high schools.. Another theory offered is that boys may find the work-based learning more relevant than traditional classroom instruction. which could increase motivation in a setting tied to immediate application.
Michael Crocco, superintendent of the Connecticut Technical Education and Career System, described that connection directly. “They can take what they learn in the classroom and put it into practice immediately,” he said.
Smaller class sizes and more time with teachers may also matter. Crocco noted that when students spend all day with a single trade instructor, “that teacher gets to know you on a different level.”
Eric Brunner. a professor of economics and policy at the University of Connecticut and Dougherty’s co-author on the Connecticut study. suggested that peer influence could play a role too.. “I can’t imagine that not helping. ” he said. describing the effect of being surrounded by classmates interested in the same work.
At Ellis Tech. head of the carpentry department James Gallow said he has seen both boys and girls thrive in the school and that outcomes depend on individual motivation.. Still, he argued that vocational education can be especially powerful—“perhaps for some boys”—because of its hands-on, applied approach.. Students who don’t feel as engaged in traditional academic settings, he said, often “respond well to learning by doing.”
In the wider push to expand technical education. advocates face a separate tension: efforts to grow male-dominated trades have long been accompanied by attempts to bring more girls into fields like plumbing. electrical work. and HVAC.. While more girls have pursued nontraditional trades than a decade or two ago. the majority still choose lower-paying jobs in education and health care. driven by a mixture of societal expectations. personal preference. and fears of harassment in male-dominated professions. surveys show.. Federal law requires states to devote part of their career and technical funds to tackling gender imbalances.
At the same time. the article reports that many vocational schools have tried to attract more girls by adding programs outside traditional trades.. In Connecticut and Massachusetts. girls make up a larger share of the student body than they used to. with Massachusetts approaching gender parity in enrollment.
Reeves, however, argues against chasing balance as the primary goal.. He points to the fact that boys perform worse in traditional schools than girls do and says evidence indicates vocational education benefits boys more than girls.. In that framing, he suggested it may be “a good thing” that the schools skew male.. He said he wouldn’t exclude females from the new schools he envisions, but would “market them primarily to males.”
Money remains the practical obstacle. Alisha Hyslop, chief policy, research and content officer at the Association for Career and Technical Education, said technical schools are costly to build and maintain, requiring expensive equipment and low student-faculty ratios.
The policy environment is also mixed.. The article says the Trump administration has voiced support for vocational education and committed funds to expand apprenticeship. but it has also canceled grants for career-oriented high schools. saying they were “not in the best interest of the federal government.”
Teacher shortages are another hurdle.. The article reports that in one federal survey. nearly a third of public schools hiring for at least one CTE position said it was difficult or impossible to fill the role.. It also states that 35 states report critical teacher shortages in high-demand fields like manufacturing, IT, and health sciences.
While teacher and funding questions shape what expansion looks like, the admission fights show how expansion intersects with fairness.. In southern New England. where many schools are oversubscribed. competition has led to “heated arguments” over seat allocation and the mission of vocational schools—whether they should admit only the highest-performing students or prioritize students less likely to be college-bound.
Until very recently. Connecticut and Massachusetts ranked applicants using selective criteria such as grades. attendance. and disciplinary records. accepting students with the highest scores.. Critics argued that approach discriminated against low-income students, students of color, and students with disabilities.
In 2023, the article says an advocacy organization filed a civil rights complaint against Massachusetts over its vocational school admission policy. An analysis by The Boston Globe found that students from low-income schools were more likely to apply, but 30 percent less likely to be accepted.
In Connecticut. the article says a state investigation launched in 2024 found that “safety review panels” used in vocational school admissions were disproportionately shutting out students with disabilities. sometimes for minor infractions.. Connecticut eliminated the panels and switched to a lottery-based system last year, and Massachusetts followed suit this year.
Not everyone welcomed the change.. Elliott Hayden. head of the masonry department at Ellis Tech. said he preferred the old system. which judged applicants in part on their response to a question asking why they wanted to attend a trade school.. Even if the question didn’t carry as much weight as quantitative factors like grades. Hayden said it helped schools screen for students committed to pursuing a trade.
Hayden said switching to a lottery has “led to many great prospective trade school kids not getting a chance. while allowing lots of students that don’t really fit the mold to get in.. It does not seem fair.” The article adds that while applicants still submit a statement of interest. it is no longer a factor in admissions.
The lottery changes, the article says, also didn’t increase capacity—so both Connecticut and Massachusetts are searching for new ways to bring technical education to more students.
In Massachusetts, one example comes from a renovated warehouse in Fitchburg, a former mill town in central Massachusetts.. The building had been vacant—described as a 16. 000-square-foot shell with cinder block walls used most recently for storage for a local brewery.. Katy Whitaker. development coordinator for Montachusett Regional Vocational Technical School (Monty Tech). leased the building in early 2023. when the school had a waitlist of several hundred students.
Whitaker’s team began dividing it into three shops with space for 126 carpentry, electrical, and plumbing students.. The satellite campus. dubbed MVP Academy. cost considerably less to construct than a new building and is described as providing a “second chance” to juniors and seniors who didn’t get in as eighth graders.
One student at MVP. Noah Couillard. practices setting up a fire alarm system on a recent school day while dividing his time between his comprehensive high school and MVP Academy. where he spends every other week learning the fundamentals of electrical work.. The article says Couillard has ADHD and always been a hands-on learner. and he described the change of environment as “a lot better than sitting in class all day. doing paperwork.”
When Couillard graduates this spring, the article says he plans to continue his training in night school and become an electrician, aiming for earnings of $70,000 to $80,000 a year.
State Sen.. John Cronin. whose district includes Monty Tech. said MVP can’t accommodate every waitlisted student. but could be more scalable than building new schools.. Cronin helped secure $15 million in a recent state spending bill for the creation of similar “annexes” in other communities.. “We don’t need more cafeterias and gyms,” Cronin said.. “We need more shops where kids can get relevant workforce training.”
Massachusetts has also invested millions over the past few years in programs that let students in traditional high schools take classes at technical high schools after regular school hours and on weekends.. In Connecticut. the article says the nonprofit The Justice Education Center runs after-school and summer programs at the state’s technical schools. offering pre-apprenticeship training and certification to hundreds of at-risk young adults each year.
Still. some educators and advocates argue the gender gap may narrow more effectively by bringing elements of technical schools—career exploration and hands-on. project-based learning—into traditional classrooms.. The article notes that even if Reeves’ vision of building 1. 000 more schools were realized. the “vast majority of boys will still attend traditional high schools.”
Hyslop said there’s no need to build brand new technical high schools everywhere. but questioned how opportunities for in-depth career experiences can expand.. The article cites programs including Massachusetts’ Innovation Career Pathways. which offer students in comprehensive high schools 100 hours or more of work experience in a high demand field. and Connecticut programs in New Haven and Bridgeport that provide technical training during the school day through union partnerships.
At Ellis Tech, the carpentry classroom’s clang and buzz are a reminder of what advocates say students are responding to. But the scramble for seats—and the shifting rules about who gets admitted—makes clear that access, not just pedagogy, remains the central challenge.
technical high schools career and technical education gender gaps admissions lottery Connecticut Massachusetts vocational education Hechinger Report Big Local News apprenticeship hands-on learning