Metco Offers Proposal To Change Application Process

Bianca Vázquez Toness is the Managing Editor and Correspondent for K-12 Education at WGBH Radio. She has covered everything from technology to immigration to presidential elections, but keeps coming back to stories about kids and schools. She's worked for Minnesota Public Radio, WBUR and Bloomberg News. She was a 2016-2017 Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT.

March 28, 2019

Updated July 31, 2023

Metco, Inc. plans to take new applications online this fall, and use a lottery process to choose participants, according to a letter obtained by WGBH News. The program sends children of color from Boston to study in suburban public schools. Under the plan, children on the waitlist would get priority in the lottery for one year.

In a letter to the state’s education commissioner Jeff Riley, Metco’s leaders say their plan for changing enrollment would be “modern, transparent, equitable, and efficient.”

The shift comes amid concerns that Metco’s first-come-first-served process privileged well-connected parents, and made it difficult for the state-funded organization to enroll students from underrepresented ethnic groups. Metco has enrolled around 300 new students a year from a waitlist of 15,000.

The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education still has to approve the plan.

Read Metco's full letter below:

METCO Proposal To Change Application Process by wgbhnews on Scribd

&amp;amp;amp;lt;/iframe&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br/&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br/&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;i&amp;amp;gt;Our coverage of K-12 education is made possible with support from the Nellie Mae Education Foundation.&amp;amp;lt;/i&amp;amp;gt;