Family Educational Rights Privacy Act (FERPA)

This section houses all guidance documents, training materials, policy letters and other resources directly related to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.  The FERPA regulations can be found here.

Guidance
Videos

Protecting Student Privacy While Using Online Educational Services

This Privacy Technical Assistance Center teacher training video is aimed at helping K-12 school officials to better protect student privacy while using online educational services and applications. The video, intended for use during teacher in-service days or professional development meetings, offers a short summary of the issue and provides some examples to help educators identify which online educational services and applications are privacy-friendly and protect student data from improper use and disclosure.

Guidance

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act Guidance on Sharing Information with Community-Based Organizations

February 2022, this document was edited to update hyperlinks and the name of the U.S. Department of Education office administering FERPA. 

 

This document provides guidance to schools and local educational agencies (LEAs) regarding disclosure of personally identifiable information (PII) from education records to community based organizations.

Guidance

Transparency Best Practices

Parents often ask questions like “What information are you collecting about my child?” “Why do you need that information, and what do you use it for?” or “How do you safeguard my child’s information?” These are legitimate questions that parents want schools and districts to answer.  This document provides a number of recommendations for keeping parents and students better informed about schools’ and districts’ collection and use of student data.