Defining FERPA

We often hear from parents that school personnel haven’t allowed them into their child’s classroom because of “FERPA”, so we decided to define “FERPA” for you and suggest that when you are told you can’t see your child’s classroom because of “FERPA,” that you ask school personnel just what “FERPA” means to them. Here is what the law says:

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) is a federal law that affords parents the right to have access to their children’s education records, the right to seek to have the records amended, and the right to have some control over the disclosure of personally identifiable information from the education records.  When a student turns 18 years old, or enters a postsecondary institution at any age, the rights under FERPA transfer from the parents to the student (“eligible student”). The FERPA statute is found at 20 U.S.C. § 1232g and the FERPA regulations are found at 34 CFR Part 99.