The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) grants certain rights to parents/families over educational records. It also requires protection of educational records.
Some of the rights guaranteed via FERPA are:
- Right to inspect records. Parents have the right to view student records.
- Right to request corrections. If a record is inaccurate, parents have the right to have it corrected.
- Control over disclosure. Schools generally can’t release PII without parental consent.
The final right is typically the one schools focus on the most. This means that school staff can’t share student records without parental consent. The exception is that they can be shared with people who have a “legitimate educational interest,” but this is typically applied fairly strictly, and it doesn’t mean we can just share student data with any other teacher in the school.
Schools can share directory information (names, dates of attendance, athletic stats, etc).