FERPA and Families

FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) helps families with their educational privacy. Anything related to the student on an educational level is covered by FERPA. If a school or educational institution has documents with specific student information, it’s automatically protected by FERPA.

While most things are covered by FERPA, there are some things that are not. Some school records that aren’t covered are: private notes, medical records, law enforcement, alumni records, personnel files, etc. Knowing what is and what isn’t covered by FERPA can help ease or add burdens to a family. FERPA’s main areas are: protection and access. Protection gives extra security to the records and only allows authorized persons to see it. Access is only given to those who are cleared to see the files, which is usually the student, their parent/guardian, and one or two educational officials.

Our family project has hit a couple bumpy roads. We are unsure as to what some parts mean and what to do on others. We only have 2 Child Priorities and 2 Family Priorities and yet there are 3 spaces for each. My group has looked over the notes made for Part A and didn’t fully understand them. We will be meeting once a week to finish the project all together instead of doing parts separately.

Once I dive more into the Law Summaries assignment, it will be easier to understand each law and what it can and can’t do for families. As of right now, it amazes me at how little each law actually does for families, depending on their need for it. Some laws overlap is what they cover, but it seems as though there are some areas that aren’t covered at all.