The Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO) began in the mid-1960s as a direct result of school desegregation efforts in Boston. Originally christened “Operation Exodus,” 400 Black students from the Roxbury neighborhood whose families were fed up with foot-dragging from desegregation opponents enrolled themselves in mostly White schools with surplus capacity in surrounding suburbs. The entire history is worth reading, but the upshot is that the protest action eventually became a formal, structured voluntary interdistrict school choice program. Today, it serves 3,150 Boston students—nearly all of them Black or Hispanic—who attend 190 schools in thirty-three suburban districts. A January report from Tufts University researcher Elizabeth Setren examines the long-term impacts of METCO participation on student academic and behavioral outcomes.
METCO supplied application and award data for K–12 students between the 2002–03 and 2019–20 school years. Applicants were matched to Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s administrative data for school enrollment, demographics, and K–12 outcomes (MCAS test scores, attendance, suspensions, etc.) through the 2022-23 school year. The National Student Clearinghouse provided college outcomes data, which include any matched applicants who were eighteen to twenty-two years old between 2002 and 2022. Earnings and unemployment data from the Massachusetts Department of Unemployment Assistance cover 2010 to 2023 and exclude individuals with federal and military jobs, those who are self-employed, and those in jobs located outside of Massachusetts. Additional applicant demographic data come from the Massachusetts Department of Vital Records. The sample includes approximately 20,000 students who applied to METCO and entered first grade in the state between 2002–03 and 2016–17.
Frustratingly, no specific number of accepted or non-accepted students is provided for either comparison group. However, Setren does give us lots of details on how she set up the comparisons between applicants who were offered a spot in a suburban school via lottery and those who were not. These include using a two-stage least squares analysis to estimate the effect of actual METCO participation (versus simply an intent-to-treat effect) and controls to adjust for the fact that some suburban schools pause acceptance in certain years which could limit the comparability of participant and non-participant cohorts in and after those pause years.
Almost 50 percent of Black students in Boston applied to METCO during the study period, and about 20 percent of Hispanic students did so, as well. The full sample of applicants is almost evenly split between boys and girls, but slightly more girls than boys ultimately participated. Setren tells us those with and without offers have similar neighborhood characteristics, health at birth, family structure, income status at birth, and parental education level. Most students apply in kindergarten or first grade, with a sharp fall-off after that, despite METCO applications being open to all grades. Just under 50 percent of those who receive K–1 offers remain in METCO schools until graduation.
Setren found substantial positive impacts for METCO participants almost across the board. By tenth grade, participants score 50 percent closer to the state average for math and two-thirds closer to the state average for ELA than their non-participant peers. Participating in METCO increases SAT taking by 30 percent and increases the likelihood of scoring 1000 or higher by 38 percent. Participation also significantly increases the likelihood students meet the state’s Competency Determination graduation requirement. However, students are not more likely to score above a 1200 on the SAT, and METCO participation showed no impact on AP exam taking or scores. Impact patterns are similar in all thirty-three suburban districts that accept Boston students.
As far as non-academic outcomes, the program lowers the likelihood students are suspended by about one-third for middle and high school grades and two-thirds for elementary grades. METCO participation increases attendance by two to four days a year (despite the farther travel distance to school every day), halves the high school dropout rate, and increases on-time high school graduation by 10 percentage points over non-participants. Long-term, attending suburban METCO schools increases four-year college enrollment by 17 percentage points, though it has no impact on enrollment in the most competitive colleges. METCO participation also results in a 6-percentage-point increase in four-year college graduation rates and leads to increased earnings and employment in Massachusetts between ages twenty-five and thirty-five.
Additionally, Setren finds no disruptive effect of having METCO participants in the grade cohort on suburban students’ MCAS test scores, attendance rates, or suspension rates. Having METCO peers does not change the proportion of a suburban student’s classmates that are suspended, regardless of the concentration of METCO students in a given grade or class. These findings are also consistent across all thirty-three suburban districts.
Do these findings indicate that suburban schools are clearly “better” than Boston Public Schools, and that METCO families are accessing “stronger” options outside the city? This and other research show that METCO students are doing far better than their peers who remain in Boston. But they do not appear, as a group, to be reaching the same performance levels as their suburban-resident classmates. Setren doesn’t look into the usual suspects like per-pupil spending, teacher pay, or teacher quality, but she does provide some interesting evidence off the beaten track. She notes that METCO participation moves students from schools where about half of graduates enroll in a four-year college to schools where about three-fourths pursue a four-year degree, and posits that this could be a key mechanism. It is likely that a strong college-going culture permeates these suburban districts—from solid literacy and numeracy foundations in elementary school, to systematic math pathways and strong extracurriculars in middle school, to ACT/SAT prep, transcript burnishing, and FAFSA support in high school. If one or more of these factors is missing or de-emphasized in a non-METCO student’s urban school, this could account for some of the outcome gaps observed.
Even more interestingly, positive outcomes for METCO students—including MCAS performance and college enrollment—occur even though they are more likely to be tracked into lower-performing classes than their non-METCO peers. It seems likely that high expectations for all students, including mastery of lower-level material before moving on to the next academic challenge, is also baked into the culture of these suburban schools. More research is needed to get to the bottom of this, particularly comparisons between METCO students and their suburban-resident classmates as well as the specific school factors that might be at play. But the fact remains that decades after the bold individual action that created METCO, Black and Hispanic parents in Boston are seeking out this systemic option in large numbers today—and students lucky enough to win the lottery are reaping quantifiable rewards.
SOURCE: Elizabeth Setren, “Impacts of the METCO Program,” The Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, and Tufts University (January 2024).
