Question
What is FERPA?
Answer
FERPA stands for Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act. It is a federal law that was passed in 1974. The law is an amendment that was added to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 when it was re-authorized in 1974. The key point is because it was just added to another act and it was an amendment, it didn't get debated by itself on the floor of the Senate. When Congress re-authorized the act, it simply became law.
In order to understand why this law was needed, let's think about this scenario. It's 1970 and parents have approached a landlord wanting to rent a house. The parents told the landlord it would be them and their two teenage sons who attend the local high school living in the house. Before he makes a decision about this, the landlord decides to go to the local high school. He walks in the door and says to the secretary, "Hey, I'm just curious. I've got this couple that wants to rent a house and I know they have boys that attend your school. I would like to see their disciplinary records just to see what kind of boys they are and see if I really want to rent this house to them." This could have been a small town back when things were overlooked and the secretary said, "No problem. I know you. You and I attended the same Sunday school class." So she pulled up the boys' disciplinary records and let this potential landlord see them so that he could base part of his decision on that. In 1970 that easily could have happened and there would have been no recourse.
This leads to the purpose of this act. It was designed to protect student records, mainly from prying eyes. Let's consider another scenario. The parent of a child comes to school. The parent wants to see the child's academic records during high school. The campus could decide not to let the parent see the material. For example, maybe the principal and the parent had words at a football game the week prior so the principal said, "No, I'm not going to give you those records."
FERPA prevents all of that from happening. It requires the school to show the parent or the eligible student the record. An eligible student is anyone that has turned 18 years of age and is legally an adult. They get the rights to their records at 18. I will probably just refer to parents throughout the course, but always know when I say parents, it also means an 18-year-old student. We're talking about early childhood students today so it's really going to be the parents of those kids.
This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the course, Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) for Early Childhood Providers, presented by PJ Winters, EdD.
