MCPS committee presses for data, outreach after review of gifted and twice-exceptional identification

Members of the Montgomery County Public Schools Committee on Special Populations focused May 5 on how the district identifies and serves gifted and talented (GT) and twice-exceptional students, pressing MCPS staff for detailed counts and more outreach after staff presented disaggregated percentage data that show wide disparities among racial, economic and language subgroups.

Christy Clark, supervisor in Accelerated and Enriched Instruction for MCPS, told the committee that “gifted and talented students are those who either perform or show the potential to perform at significantly higher levels than their peers,” and that state regulation requires every district to identify at least 10 percent of its students as GT. Clark described a multi-office MCPS process that begins with a universal screening in grade 2 and additional screenings in grades 3, 5 and 7; she said the district uses multiple measures including the Cognitive Abilities Test, DIBELS (and the Spanish version, Lecturda), MAP, MCAP state assessments and behavioral input from teachers and parents.

The district reported that its overall identification rate for grades 3 through 12 is 18.6 percent. But staff and board members repeatedly highlighted subgroup gaps the presentation showed: Hispanic students make up 35.3 percent of the total student population but account for 13.7 percent of the GT-identified population; white students are 24 percent of the total…