Metco, Inc., the program's central administering entity, recruits students for the program and provides other services to participating students and their parents. The acronym in the program's name stands for Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, Inc., a nonprofit corporation that recruits students for the program. Metco began in 1965 under a state Racial Imbalance Act passed in the same year. Total Metco enrollment declined by 200 in the past decade. There are 12,500 students on the program's waiting list.
Suburban districts decide whether to participate and how many spaces to offer.
The original legislation targeted the program to black students and until 1995, all participants were black. In 1995, the state opened Metco to other minorities. Now the program must enroll new students based on the racial composition of the minority student population of the Boston Public Schools. According to Russell Fleming of the Massachusetts Education Department, students are chosen on the basis of race and ethnicity. There is no lottery for choosing participants.