METCO was developed during a period of activism by Black parents, primarily mothers, in Boston to achieve educational equity through
school desegregation. In 1963, the Boston branch of the
NAACP demanded that the School Committee of
Boston Public Schools acknowledge
de facto segregation and commit to a series of reforms. The demands were presented by the chair of the Education Committee of the NAACP, activist Ruth Batson. A series of protests gained publicity; they included sit-ins, boycotts, and a self-funded desegregation program within the city called Operation Exodus. However, the Boston Public Schools continued to either deny that racial disparities existed, or to deny responsibility for them. The state of Massachusetts, on the other hand, did provide legal support for the protestors. The Racial Imbalance Bill was filed by State Representative
Royal L. Bolling and passed in 1965 as Massachusetts General Law Chapter 76, Section 12A. This law authorized the withholding of funds from any public school deemed to be perpetuating “racial imbalance,” which was defined as having more than 50% non-white students. The law also enabled city and town school committees and districts to "help alleviate racial isolation" (defined as any public school where more than 70% of the student population is white) through voluntary cross-district enrollment. In response to
Civil Rights protests in the Southern United States, groups in the Boston suburbs (such as fair housing advocates, civil rights committees, the
League of Women Voters, churches, and members of School Committees) began to conceive of programs to enroll Black students allowed under the Racial Imbalance Act. A group led by MIT Professor Dr. Leon Trilling (Chair of Brookline's School Committee) presented what they called the METCO initiative to Ruth Batson, then the director of the
Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination. She agreed to support the program as associate director alongside Joseph Killory, who took a leave from the
Massachusetts Department of Education to serve as executive director. METCO filed for non-profit status in 1966 with Trilling as the chair of the board of directors. Among those also serving on the original Board of Directors were
Paul Parks from the NAACP, arts educator
Elma Lewis, Boston teacher
John D. O'Bryant, Brookline School Superintendent Robert Sperber, Newton Superintendent Charles Brown, and Newton School Committee member Katherine Jones. The group received grants from the
Carnegie Corporation and the
U.S. Department of Education, and engaged a research group from
Harvard to evaluate the program's initial effectiveness. The first 220 METCO students, individually recruited and interviewed by Batson, rode buses from
Roxbury, North
Dorchester, and the
South End to their first day of school in seven participating school districts in Greater Boston:
Arlington,
Braintree,
Brookline,
Lexington,
Lincoln,
Newton, and
Wellesley. Batson became the executive director of the program in 1968, and the Massachusetts State Legislature began funding the program through a yearly line item. Additional school districts applied to participate in METCO in the late 1960s, with the full cohort of 33 current districts signing on by 1972. Robert C. Hayden served as executive director from 1969 to 1973. and local opposition. As of 2015 there are approximately 3,300 students enrolled in the program, the majority of whom come from the city of Boston (about 150 come from the city of Springfield). As of 2001, approximately 4,300 students have graduated from the program since its founding. As of 2010–2011, 33 of the 37 receiving districts remained "racially isolated" (over 70% white) while 4 receiving districts are "racially balanced" (50–70% white). ==Research and impact==