A year and a half ago, in response to pressure to do something about de facto segregation in Boston, the School Committee told parents that they could send their children to any school in the city where there was an empty seat.

What they got was Operation Exodus, a group of parents who, without pay, and without much professional help, are busing more than 800 children out of predominantly Negro areas such as Roxbury into schools elsewhere in the city. Exodus' success in the Negro community has been startling. Its enrollment this year is almost double that of last, and there is a waiting list. The parents have done more than supervising the busing; from their storefront office on Roxbury's Blue Hill Avenue, they have started tutorial and recreational programs.

They would like to do more -- in fact, they want to set up their own private school board -- but their finances have prevented it. The money they have been able to raise, from fund drives and, more recently, from foundations, has only been enough to keep the buses running for a few more months.

Until recently, this was largely the fault of the School Committee. With the committee's approval, Exodus could have applied for a share of the large amount of Federal money available for educational "demonstration projects." But the committee, though it gave such approval to a program for busing Negro children to suburban schools, wasn't willing to give it to Exodus.

Then Harvard offered a way out. A number of researchers at the Ed School wanted to sponsor a project that would study Exodus' effect on the children it carries and their parents. As part of the project, they planned to ask the Office of Education for enough money to support Exodus generously for the duration of the study -- at least a year. It seemed to be both a good idea and a politically feasible one. Though the support of the Boston School Committee wasn't necessary, it was won. The members of the committee favored the research part of the proposal and paid little attention to the rest.

But, last week, Commissioner of Education Harold Howe II told Harvard and Exodus that the plan had been rejected. The Office of Education, he said, might fund the research, but it could not provide the money that had been requested -- almost $160,000 -- for Exodus. He explained that these were far from normal operating expenses in a research proposal and, with little research money available anyway, they had to be cut. It was possible, he said, that some money could be provided for Exodus -- and it seemed clear that he was impressed by Exodus and not against the idea of federal support for private, citizen's education projects.

The idea would have been more impressive, though, had it been backed by the $160,000. The request was not unusually large; the gains from seeing what a group like Exodus can do when it is adequately financed would have been great. It was the wrong time for the Office of Education to refuse to make an exception.