In July 2025, Commissioner Pedro Martinez approved all updated CTE frameworks. As defined in the CTE regulations, all state designated CTE Programs must provide instruction based on the CTE Frameworks and the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks. With this, DESE has been working to support districts in this transition since the initial posting of new frameworks in SY24-25 through grant funding, published planning resources, and community of practice meetings.
All CTE programs are required to align programs with the updated CTE frameworks by June 2027 to ensure students in the Class of 2030 and beyond benefit from aligned, high-quality CTE programming.
Beginning in SY24-25, districts received grant support through fund code 0426 to begin early alignment work. To support districts in framework alignment, and with feedback from the 0426 community of practice, DESE has published Scope and Sequence Templates for each program area.
DESE will continue to offer technical assistance and grant funding throughout the alignment process in SY26-27.
Districts should be working to update their CTE programs to align to the CTE Frameworks, ensuring continued CTE designation requirements. Through this process, the district should be evaluating all aspects of their program implementation for CTE Framework alignment, including:
The MA DESE CTE Program Scope and Sequence tool is a model that’s been created in partnership with districts who opted into the 0426 Grant Community of Practice over the past two years. The tool reflects information that should be in a Scope and Sequence. If districts have a local version that they use, they do not need to use this model.
Office hours and technical assistance webinars will be posted to this page as they become available.
The Quality Support System is designed to create strategic partnerships between districts, schools and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's Office of College, Career, and Technical Education. In this process DESE supports schools and districts as they continue to implement systems that foster high quality career-connected instruction and student learning experiences.
Through the Office of College Career and Technical Education, DESE provides resources, technical assistance, and targeted support to invited school districts. Schools are invited to participate in QSS through a review of key performance indicators across the Comprehensive Local Needs Assessment (CLNA). The metrics used to determine invitations include:
Districts may also be invited to the QSS as part of Methods of Administration (MOA) technical assistance.
Districts that accept an invitation to the QSS have access to additional funding and technical assistance to support their continuous improvement goals. The process begins with a review of the district’s current Comprehensive Local Needs Assessment (CLNA). From the CLNA review, the district, school, and DESE team identify 1–2 high impact goals and strategies to address the school’s needs. These should be aligned to the school’s and district’s existing priorities.
The school, district, and DESE team develop an action plan that includes a goal, target metric, and tasks for each entity. Action plans are updated regularly and may span multiple school years depending on the agreed-upon goals. DESE support may include targeted grant funding, vendor support, connections to schools and resources, and ongoing technical assistance.
Districts may opt not to take advantage of the funding and resources of the QSS when invited. If the indicators that led to identification were regulatory or statutory requirements, districts may need to provide documentation of their local plan for addressing the indicators.
Districts must submit a Perkins Performance improvement plan for each performance indicator which has not been met at the 90% state performance levels. Levels are set through the Perkins State Plan. The Performance Indicators are:
The district shall develop and implement a program improvement plan (that includes an analysis of the performance disparities or gaps among special populations and actions that will be taken to address such gaps in consultation with a diverse body of stakeholders, including, at a minimum—
Consultation shall take place during the first program year succeeding the program year for which the eligible recipient failed to so meet any of the local levels of performance for any of the core indicators of performance, and on an ongoing basis as needed to accomplish the improvement plan.
Perkins Performance Improvement Plans are incorporated directly into Perkins Grant applications: Fund Code 400 (Secondary) and Fund Code 401 (Postsecondary).
This section provides an overview of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's (the Department) implementation of the Federal Guidelines for Eliminating Discrimination and Denial of Services on the Basis of Race, Color, National Origin, Sex and Handicap in Vocational Education Programs (MOA Guidelines), specifically as they relate to secondary CTE student eligibility, recruitment, and admission.
The MOA Guidelines require states to conduct civil rights reviews in districts that receive federal funds and offer CTE. These MOA reviews require states to "adopt a compliance program to prevent, identify and remedy discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, or handicap." Guidelines at II.B. The compliance program must include:
Collecting and analyzing civil rights related data and information that subrecipients compile for their own purposes or that are submitted to State and Federal officials under existing authorities;
Conducting periodic compliance reviews of selected subrecipients (i.e., an investigation of a subrecipient to determine whether it engages in unlawful discrimination in any aspect of its program); upon finding unlawful discrimination, notifying the subrecipient of steps it must take to attain compliance and attempting to obtain voluntary compliance;
Providing technical assistance upon request to subrecipients. This will include assisting subrecipients to identify unlawful discrimination and instructing them in remedies for and prevention of such discrimination;
Periodically reporting its activities and findings under the foregoing paragraphs, including findings of unlawful discrimination under paragraph 2, immediately above, to the Office for Civil Rights (OCR).
Note: (a subrecipient is defined in the MOA Guidelines at II.B., and it includes a local educational authority that receives financial assistance through DESE)
The Department's MOA process has been approved by OCR and includes three steps:
In connection with CTE student eligibility, recruitment, and admissions, the Department's MOA pre-onsite monitoring activities include a desk review of all districts reporting more applications than available seats. The Department calculates a comparison index, identifies potential disproportionality, and determines which schools or programs require technical assistance or further MOA review.
The MOA Guidelines prohibit using selective admissions criteria "that have the effect of disproportionately excluding persons of a particular race, color, national origin, sex, or handicap," unless the criteria "have been validated as essential to participation in a given program and that alternative equally valid criteria that do not have such a disproportionate adverse effect are unavailable." Guidelines at IV.K. The Department reviews enrollment data submitted by districts each fall to identify districts whose data indicates potential disproportionate exclusion of one or more protected classes of students.
The Department compares admitted students to students in sending communities using a comparison index. The comparison index is a method of comparing a CTE district's population to students residing in its region to check for a comparable demographic profile. To calculate the comparison index, all students in the grade levels served by the CTE district who reside in member districts, except those that are served in out-of-district placements, are included in the sample. For each year, the total number of students in the sample in the grades served by the CTE district in the subgroup is divided by the total number of students in the sample in the grades served by the CTE district. This figure is then adjusted using the Wilson Score Interval (WSI) method to calculate a "lower limit" (a one-sided 99% confidence interval below the unadjusted index). This final figure is the comparison index.
If a CTE district's proportion of students in a particular subgroup falls below the comparison index, this means that there is 99% statistical confidence that the subgroup population in the CTE district is below the mean of the comparison sample. Said another way, the comparison index indicates with 99% confidence that the enrollment of a given student population at a CTE district is or is not comparable to that of the enrollment of their sending region.
To determine if districts are enrolling particular demographic groups (Students of Color, Students with Disabilities, and English Learners) at disproportionate rates, we calculate the difference between the attending 9th grade students at that district and the comparison index for that district. The comparison index is what we would expect the 9th grade enrollment to be at the CTE district, using data from the region and adjusting for grades served, size of the district, and variability. When the difference between the attending 9th grade students and comparison index is negative, it indicates a 99% confidence level that the enrollment is under-representative of that district's region.
The Department reviews at least two years of data and flags potential disproportionate student populations where:
Using this information, the Department identifies (1) districts that are newly identified for potential disproportionate exclusion in one or more protected groups, (2) districts that have had potential disproportionate exclusion in one protected group across more than one school year, and (3) districts that have potential disproportionate exclusion in two or more protected groups over more than one year. For districts that have potential disproportionate exclusion over more than one year, the Department then considers whether districts have made progress in the current school year as compared with past years, and whether the differences have been persistent or are a newer issue.
After reviewing the Department's findings, the Commissioner determines which districts' data indicate disproportionate exclusion and therefore will be part of the formal MOA review process, and which districts may require technical assistance.
The Department then schedules an on-site meeting at those districts entering the formal MOA review process. Department staff provide the MOA-Onsite-Documentation tool for districts to compile all necessary information in advance of that meeting. At the on-site meeting, the district and Department staff review the documentation together, and Department staff may request additional information or discussions with specific district staff. Following the visit, the Department will issue a Letter of Finding (LOF). In cases where the LOF contains findings that require action, the district will submit a Voluntary Compliance Plan (VCP) to the Department's Office of C.
For each finding that requires action, the district must describe the proposed corrective actions the district will implement together with:
The Superintendent must take the following steps in developing the VCP:
Department staff will provide technical assistance to the district throughout the VCP process. The Department's written review of the VCP will describe whether and to what extent the district must provide progress reports. If the Department cannot approve the VCP as written by the district, it will provide a written explanation with its reasons, along with a VCP written by the Department for the district to review and implement.
The Department has issued guidance documents regarding key stages of students' trajectory through CTE pathways, from information-sharing with prospective students and their families, to admissions policies and practices, to student outcome tracking.
The Department has also developed several interactive CTE data tools to assist districts in reflecting and acting on student admissions data, including waitlist and enrollment information. The Department further hosts several hours of "drop-in" technical assistance sessions for districts, to answer questions about the tools.
Additionally, the Department offers individual support and grant resources to districts to support improving policies and procedures for eligibility, recruitment, and admissions. Inquiries about the MOA process for recruitment, can be directed to CCTE@mass.gov .
Last Updated: May 29, 2026