Did you know search engines like Google are changing the way you see news? Keep Chalkbeat’s valuable education coverage at the top of your feeds by clicking here and checking the box next to our name.
The phrase “Boston busing” connotes violent clashes and bitter opposition to school integration in the 1970s. Yet over the last several decades the Boston area has been undertaking a remarkable — and it turns out remarkably successful — experiment in school integration.
The still-operating program, known as Metco, buses a few thousand mostly Black and Hispanic students from Boston to a number of mostly white suburban schools.
Now Tufts University economist Elizabeth Setren is out with a newly published study tracking the long-run effects of Metco. Participating students’ test scores rose modestly, and their chances of completing high school and college increased dramatically, compared to similar students who applied to the program but didn’t get in. College graduation rates went from 26% to 38%. The program also boosted students’ annual incomes by several thousand dollars when they became adults.
Metco, in short, proved educationally and economically transformational for many. Big effects like these are not common in education research. For that reason alone, they’re worth trying to learn from, even if we know that outsize gains are inevitably hard to replicate.
To better understand these findings, I spoke with Setren about her study and its implications. I was especially interested in understanding what drove the success of Metco. Was it higher-quality instruction, a more integrated school environment, classes with higher-achieving peers, the opportunity to choose a better school, support for selecting a good college — or all of the above?
Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Why did you personally get interested in studying Metco?
I went to a high school that was the English language learner magnet for my large county in Baltimore, and it brought up a lot of fascinating policy issues. What does it look like to have a very diverse schoolhouse, but that’s also not integrated when it comes to the classes themselves?
How does participating in Metco change the students’ experience in school?
Their class size on average is about two students smaller. They are in classes with much higher-performing peers [overall], but they are also in the lower-performing classes [within their school]. They have long bus rides. There is a difference in the ability to participate in after-school activities. In high school, Metco students are in schools with many more AP class options, but they’re not taking AP classes at a higher rate. They are less likely to get suspended and their attendance rate is higher.
They are also more likely to be identified for special education, right?
Yes, and it’s hard to interpret without knowing more — is that a good thing or a bad thing? It could be that now they’re getting services they need to succeed. Or you could be concerned about racial bias in classification.
The test score effects you find are meaningful but not eye-popping. Whereas the college completion effects are some of the largest I’ve seen in the literature.
Yeah, that’s also my take. It’s very rare to see an intervention years later still have this large of an effect on something like college enrollment, persistence, and graduation. I also study the charter schools in Boston. There are larger test score effects, but there are much more mixed findings for college going and graduation.
We can’t really say with a ton of confidence what is actually leading to these gains, except for the general package of experience that is being in the Metco program. Metco is most effective for people who are less likely to have college knowledge at home and where the school they would have gone to otherwise had worse college outcomes.
Is it plausible that the biggest benefits from Metco came through who you go to school with, rather than the type of education you get at the school you attend?
It’s very hard to tease that apart. If we think of what happens with Metco, it’s dramatically changing the type of school you go to. It’s shifting the type of peers you have. It’s shifting the type of teachers you have. To me it’s something about the shift in college expectations or maybe the peers, but it’s hard to disentangle.
What do you see when you’re looking at the effects on suburban schools and students?
I find no evidence of any negative test score effect, and I find no evidence of spillover behavioral effects. Students aren’t getting suspended at a higher rate, and also students aren’t in a classroom where there’s more suspension or more tardiness or lower attendance.
Have you examined how the program has affected students’ attitudes or subjective well-being?
So I have ongoing work, not released yet, looking at some of the more social and civic longer-run impacts of Metco.
What are the policy implications of this work?
Districts and school systems across the country are doing some form of racial or socioeconomic integration, so we can learn from this. In this scenario, students went from a setting where college-going is not [the norm] to a place where it’s very common. I’ve heard Metco alums say they went from the question being, “Do you want to go to college?” to “Where are you going to college?”
Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.
