Responsive to this request, and per clarification that you are seeking “to ascertain is whether the achievement gap that has increased over time in Howard County is due to the movement of new students into our system or from students that have been in our system,” while existing measures used by our student data system for enrollment purposes reflect movements into our schools where known (was previously enrolled in another Maryland school, was previously enrolled out of state, entering kindergarten, etc.), no report of such measures reflect “moving into Howard County.” For instance, both a student who had been in Howard County schools all their life, attended another Maryland school for half a year for any number of purposes, and then returned would be coded in the same enrollment category as a student who came to a Howard County school from another Maryland school for the first time.
Additionally, no existing reports compare the type of enrollment for students to their demographics. Please note, under the MPIA process, and as advised in the Fourteenth Edition of the Maryland Public Information Act Manual created by Maryland’s Office of the Attorney General, an agency is only obligated to produce existing records and is not required to generate new data or summarize data. In order to extract enrollment categories compared to student demographics from the HCPSS reporting system (should a definition for “moving to Howard County” be identified), a new query would have to be programmed. Per the MPIA GP § 4-205(c)(4)(iii), an agency is not required to program a new record if the type of data extraction requested is outside its normal course of business.