From the Student Press Law Center (3/18/11): In the past year, courts across the country have tried to interpret the meaning of the federal student privacy law, known as FERPA. Several recent rulings suggest the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act does not protect the vast array of information about students that some universities have claimed.
FERPA was passed by Congress in 1973, and allows the Department of Education to pull federal funding of schools that have a policy or practice of releasing “education records” with the permission of students. The exact scope of that law – and how it interacts with the state public records laws used by journalists and citizens nationwide – has been debated for years.
During Sunshine Week 2011, the following FERPA developments from the past year are worth noting.