By Audience: Parents and Students

The Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) affords certain rights to Parents and Eligible Students in regards to Education Records that are maintained by schools and universities.  This section is dedicated to providing resources and guidance that directly refer to these rights held by parents and eligible students.

Guidance

FERPA General Guidance for Parents (En Español)

This compliation of letters and guidance documents provides parents with general information about the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). This document is a compilation and update of various letters and guidance documents previously issued that respond to a variety of questions about FERPA. This version is the Spanish translation.

Guidance
Videos

School Volunteers and FERPA

Volunteers are important in helping schools operate efficiently, but it’s important to know your role in protecting student information while helping out in your school. This video explains some of a school volunteer’s responsibilities to help keep the student information they work with private and secure. The Privacy Technical Assistance Center has also released a corresponding brochure that schools can use to help train their volunteers with their legal responsibilities to protect student data. This brochure can be found here.

Guidance
Videos

The A-B-C's of Student Directory Information

FERPA allows schools and districts to designate certain basic student information as directory information, and share that information without consent if certain additional requirements are met. This video describes why a school would want to use designated student directory information and the types of information that fall into this category. It also explains the process that schools and districts must adhere to when designating directory information.

Guidance
Videos

Student Privacy 101:

The Department of Education is committed to student privacy.  We administer the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), and we provide technical assistance to help schools and school districts use best practices in their use and management of information about students.  This site aims to assist stakeholders in protecting the privacy of students by providing official guidance on FERPA , technical best practices and the answers to Frequently Asked Questions.  Responsibility for the Department’s student privacy operations lies in the Office of the Chief Privacy Officer.  To learn more about FERPA please click on the video to the right.

Letters

SPPO Findings Letters 2012

As part of its enforcement activities under FERPA, the Student Privacy Policy Office issues a variety of letters to include letters that explain why an investigation will not be initiated as well as that detail our findings after conducting an investigation.  While we have identified those letters of more significance and posted them under “Letters of Importance,” we also want to make available the full collection of findings letters we issued in this archive.  The attached archive, in ZIP file format, contains redacted letters from the 2012 calendar year.