More than 20 years ago, as Susan Eaton began her graduate school research on the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO), she noticed something.
“There was a lot written about ‘What are the effects of METCO? Is METCO bad or is it good?’” said Eaton, director of Brandeis University’s Sillerman Center for the Advancement of Philanthropy. “But you know, they never actually talked to the people who took part in it. And I found that odd.”
So when she wrote her 2001 book, “The Other Busing Story,” Eaton included interviews with 65 METCO graduates. Updated in 2020, the book highlights the graduates’ reflections on the METCO program — the good experiences, the difficult ones, and the complex.
Last year marked the 50th anniversary of Boston’s busing crisis, set in motion in June 1974 when U.S. District Court Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr. ruled for the integration of Boston Public Schools. That court order prompted the busing of Boston Public Schools students among neighborhoods throughout the city. While busing ended in 1988, the METCO voluntary school busing program continued.
Launched in 1966, eight years before court-mandated busing, the voluntary school busing program allows students living in Boston to apply for spots in partner suburban school districts. Belmont Public Schools has been a METCO partner district since 1970. Today, roughly 100 students make the daily Boston-Belmont commute to attend the town’s seven schools. A staff of six, led by Belmont METCO Director Rosa Inniss, supports Boston-based students and their families.
Last January, Elizabeth Setren, an associate professor of economics at Tufts University, released a study tracking the outcomes for the 3,205 students enrolled in METCO.
That study, based on 20 years of data, showed METCO students outperformed their Boston peers in Boston Public Schools academically, and their presence did not negatively affect their suburban peers’ classroom experience.
In March, The Belmont Voice sought to find out whether Setren’s results hold true at Belmont Public Schools’ METCO program. The Voice hoped to interview Belmont Public Schools’ leaders and staff about Boston students’ experiences, graduation and college enrollment rates. Plans to interview Boston-based students and families to understand the lived METCO experience were unsuccessful. Nearly a year later, the detailed, personal portrait The Belmont Voice sought to share with readers remains out of reach, with district employees and leaders unwilling to talk.
Academic Benefits
Each year some 1,200 Boston students register for METCO’s lottery, vying for 300 to 400 open spots in 190 schools across 33 partner districts. Of all METCO students, 67% are Black, 24% are Hispanic, 2% are Asian, 1% are white and 5% identify as “other.” A high percentage live in Mattapan and Dorchester, according to METCO President and CEO Milly Arbaje-Thomas.
METCO headquarters staff support participating families, manage recruitment and the lottery, and provide a vision for the program’s future. Families can apply for the lottery at any point in their children’s K-12 career. Applicants indicate up to three favorite districts, and those chosen are added to their top districts’ waitlists. When headquarters knows how many slots are available in each district, staff place families in order by lottery number and grade.
“The districts have to tell us what they need because it’s a space availability program,” Arbaje-Thomas said.
If local students fill all available district spots, none are open to Boston students.
Each participating district has its own METCO director and staff who manage METCO at the district level — from forming an admissions committee and making final enrollment decisions to planning orientation for Boston families. In Belmont, Inniss manages orientation, enrollment and placement. She also works to support Boston participants’ success. Inniss reviews data and considers who needs help, and what type. She also attends monthly METCO Directors’ Association meetings to learn how her counterparts at other districts do their work.
Setren’s study showed METCO leads to substantial gains in Math and English Language Arts (ELA) MCAS test scores across grades 3 through 10. Students score 50 percent closer to the state average for Math and two-thirds closer to the state average for ELA by 10th grade because of program participation.
“Data on METCO suburban students include demographics, MCAS test scores, attendance, suspension, SAT and AP test-taking and scores, and high school graduation,” according to the study summary.
Setren, who declined to be interviewed for this article, found that Boston students at METCO partner schools scored higher in math and English Language Arts by 10th grade than students attending Boston Public Schools who sought admission to METCO but didn’t get in; took the SATs at higher rates; were suspended less often; and attended school two to four days more per year, despite longer commutes.
Additionally, participating in METCO increased students’ four-year college enrollment rate by 17%.
“METCO results in a 6-percentage point increase in 4-year college graduation rates and leads to increased earnings and employment in Massachusetts at age 25 through 35,” Setren wrote in the study’s executive summary. “The impacts across the 33 different districts are similar,” she noted.
Belmont School Officials Stay Quiet
During the 2023-2024 academic year, 29 of Belmont High School’s 1,462 students commuted from Boston. Jim Brown, the school’s lead counselor, said last April that two Boston students were on his caseload.
When asked if Belmont METCO student scores aligned with Setren’s findings, Brown was unsure.
“We really haven’t tracked that,” he said, adding that he didn’t have data on college enrollment statistics for Belmont High School students attending through the METCO program. Moreover, he said, the school doesn’t use college readiness software Naviance to collect such statistics.
“We don’t track it by race. That’s something we could do,” he said.
Asked if 2023 Belmont High School graduates from Boston had gone on to college, Brown replied: “Off the top of my head, I don’t know,” adding that he would have to find the information online.
In October, he wrote in an email that the high school doesn’t collect Boston METCO students’ college enrollment data. Asked about the social and emotional experience of Boston students in Belmont, Brown said he didn’t know. “Rosa would know,” he added, referring to Inniss.
Inniss turned down several interview requests between March and late September. She also said she didn’t want Boston students or families to be interviewed for this story. In late March, Human Rights Commission Chair Kimberly Haley-Jackson responded to an email in late March. Speaking by phone, Haley-Jackson said she would see if anyone in her network wanted to be interviewed. Follow-up requests were not returned. Joe Bernard, then-president of Belmont Against Racism (BAR), too, said he could not connect me with families. Like Brown, he suggested that I talk with Inniss.
After multiple email requests, Superintendent Jill Geiser and Assistant Superintendent Lucia Sullivan (whose husband is a Belmont Voice board member) declined to be interview for this story.
For her part, Arbaje-Thomas said that Setren, rather than Inniss, would be the best source for graduation and college enrollment data.
“[Setren] has the most accurate numbers, even better than the [METCO district] directors, because she has access to college board data, to Department of Education data,” Arbaje-Thomas said.
In November, The Voice submitted public information requests to DESE and Belmont Public Schools, asking for records of Boston METCO students’ graduation and college enrollment rates. Information was sought from Belmont Public Schools for Boston METCO students’ college enrollment statistics in 2023 and 2024, and between 2014 and 2024. An email response said the district doesn’t have documents “responsive to your Public Records Request.”
The DESE representative who responded to the request for Boston METCO students’ graduation and college enrollment rates broken down by participating districts wrote, “We do not have records responsive to your request. You might want to consider contacting Elizabeth Setren at Tufts or Ann Mantil at Harvard, who have researched METCO.”
Mantil declined an interview request last March, while Setren wrote in an email that month that she could not discuss district-specific results due to data agreements.
According to Arbaje-Thomas, METCO is not subject to public records law because it is a private non-profit group.
Reducing Logistical Issues in Belmont
Brown said one of the high school’s goals is increasing METCO students’ participation in extracurricular activities. Traveling between Boston and suburban districts creates hurdles to arriving early to school or staying late, especially given many families’ reliance on public transportation.
“The logistical issues are not minor,” Eaton said.
When families have more than one child in METCO, things become even more complicated, especially if they attend schools in different towns.
“It’s a very tricky, tricky thing for these kids,” said current BAR President Didier Moïse said in September.
Last year, BAR donated $9,000 to Belmont METCO. The 501(c)(3) nonprofit typically contributes about 55% of its annual $15,000 to $20,000 budget to the program so that Boston students can participate more fully in extracurricular activities, including field trips.
“From BAR’s perspective, what we don’t want is the METCO students to feel like they’re not Belmont students, because they are Belmont students,” Moïse said. “They may not reside here, but they are Belmont students.”
“A Conspicuous Visitor”
How Belmont and other METCO partner districts manage barriers to extracurricular activities could be one nonacademic measure of the program’s success, according to Casey Cobb, a professor of education policy at the University of Connecticut. Cobb studies Open Choice, a program similar to METCO that Cobb describes as “interdistrict.” Open Choice and METCO are two of about eight such programs in the country, Cobb said.
Those programs’ assessments should include multiple questions about each school’s climate, as well as urban students’ sense of belonging and their sense of opportunities for academic enhancement and diverse experiences, according to Cobb.
“It’s not enough just to provide the experience. The experience has to be quality and serve the student well,” he explained.
When Eaton interviewed METCO alumni, they told her their experiences included explicit racism. More often, though, they felt the pervasiveness of racial stereotypes and “implied racism,” including teachers’ lower expectations, Eaton said.
“You’re almost seen as a conspicuous visitor because the school district is so incredibly white,” Eaton said.
Nonetheless, she found that METCO alumni didn’t regret going to suburban schools. Their networks of Black METCO alumni have been important to them — and participating in METCO “enabled them to enter white-dominated settings and persist in those settings after high school,” Eaton said.
Setren’s study revealed METCO’s many academic benefits for the program’s Boston students. Its inclusion of the measurable impact on resident students hints at something Eaton said: that Boston students aren’t the only ones to benefit from METCO.
“Schools have so many roles,” she said. “I think it’s also about citizenship and … helping to build better citizens and better leaders” by exposing students to people from a variety of backgrounds. Brown agreed.