About Us

Our History: 30 Years of Making a Meaningful Difference

Establishing Our Roots

In August 1977, Metis Associates was founded by Ben Josephson, Jr., Richard Pargament and Samuel Scharff, who had come from the Social Sciences Division of Riverside Research Institute. Our current president, Stan Schneider, joined one year later, having worked in school evaluation for the New York City Board of Education. Metis established its first contractual relationship with the New York City Board of Education in 1980. This project—a series of program evaluations for Community School District 18 in Brooklyn—was to lay the groundwork for a long and fulfilling partnership with the Board (now Department) of Education. It also led to another long-term collaboration, with the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), which started with the development of a competitive proposal for the Dial-A-Teacher program. With the success of that proposal, in 1982, a citywide initiative and national model was born.

Becoming a National Firm

Metis Associates’ first contract with the Annie E. Casey Foundation, signed in 1988, set the stage for Metis to become a national organization with capacities in large-scale program evaluation, comprehensive community initiatives, and client-tracking systems. Its first project with Annie E. Casey was to support the New Futures Initiative, a multisite middle-school reform initiative. Recognizing Metis’s capability to provide technical assistance in client-tracking and information systems, the foundation offers this service to many more of its grantees nationwide. In 1990, Metis wrote its first successful federal grant application for a school district—the Magnet Schools Assistance Program (MSAP) — awarded to New York City Community School District 1. Since then, Metis has successfully collaborated with urban, suburban, and rural school districts to secure 16 MSAP grants to open or convert some 70 elementary, middle, and high schools into theme-based magnets. In 1997, Metis opened its Atlanta office, which would become a catalyst for its growing work in Georgia and a base for expansion to other southern states, including North Carolina, Arkansas, and Florida.

Deepening Our Roots, Making New Connections

The past decade has been a time of substantial growth for Metis Associates, as the firm expanded its staff, its client base, and its physical premises. In 2000, we moved to 90 Broad Street, doubling our office space to accommodate a staff of 60 professionals. By the beginning of the new millennium, Metis was providing professional services to more than 50 percent of New York City’s Community School Districts and to the central Department of Education. Its customer base included more than 70 clients and well over 100 separate engagements. With the retirement in 2006 of Metis co-founder Richard Pargament, Stan Schneider became president and chief executive officer. The same year, in collaboration with the Arkansas Department of Education, Metis received its first federally funded contract to conduct a statewide evaluation that included an experimental research design.

During the past decade, Metis again expanded geographically, with the opening a new office in Philadelphia. Its proposal-development activities hit the $100 million mark in 2003 and has now surpassed $170 million. In recent years, the firm has taken on a number of major clients—including several in the child-welfare arena. Metis has completed or is involved in more than half a dozen research and strategic planning projects for the New York City Administration for Children’s Services (ACS), and has done considerable work with the Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative (JCYOI), which focuses on improving the prospects for children transitioning out of foster care. It has also begun working for the newly formed Georgia Governor’s Office for Children and Families (GOCF), which is striving to improve child-welfare services in the state. In 2008, Metis began an exciting new collaboration, evaluating programs for the New York City Mayor’s Center for Economic Opportunity (CEO), a sweeping and nationally significant antipoverty initiative.