HCPSS MPIA Request #2025-054

Requestor
Elaine R Gordon
Requested Information
We are requesting the percentage of students (nationally, statewide and in Howard County) in G/T courses who also have IEP plans. And the percentage that have 504 plans. It would be helpful to have this broken out by elementary school, middle school and high school if possible. Thank you!
Date Received
Status
Complete
Response Notes

Please note, under the MPIA process, and as advised in the Eighteenth 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 has no obligation to create records to satisfy a PIA request. HCPSS would not produce data for nationwide or statewide incidents of students with language disorders and/or participation in G/T programming. For reference, this HCPSS website for twice-exceptional learners contains links to state and national resources: https://www.hcpss.org/academics/gifted-and-talented/twice-exceptional-learners/.

Responsive Documents
Responsive to this request, please find attached data on the percentage of HCPSS students participating in Gifted and Talented (identified as students in grades 4-12 who are enrolled in a G/T course, as well as AP course at the high school level, as of the end of the most recent school year) by IEP and 504. Please note, while individual IEP goals and objectives may identify language disorders for which each student is receiving related services, we do not identify students in gifted and talented by “language disorders.” Per clarification you are instead seeking percents for all disability categories, please find that data in the attached as well. HCPSS must protect against the potential disclosures of personally identifiable information about students as required by both the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA), which restricts access to student records, and MPIA GP § 4-313, which prevents disclosure of school district records pertaining to individual students. In accordance, HCPSS follows the Maryland State Department of Education and the National Center for Education Statistics’ guidelines for protecting student privacy in public reporting and suppresses the following from responsive records: populations that fall below 10; percentages that are less than or equal to 5, or greater than or equal to 95; categories directly related to specific student records; and/or information that
can reasonably identify an individual student or reveals information from an individual student’s record or could do so when combined with other publicly accessible data.

*Some request language is summarized to include the requester's specific document requests and legally protected information (such as personally identifiable information of a student) or personal, defamatory and malicious content removed at the discretion of the school system.

**Responses containing legally protected information available only to the person of interest are omitted from the above report.

***Howard County Public Schools reserves the right to remove erroneous or outdated documents from this site.