Student privacy FERPA tips

Addressing Student Privacy: FERPA Tips

FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) is a federal law that governs educational records. It grants specific rights to students and regulates how institutions must handle educational records, including grades. In short, educational information is protected information, much like medical records.

Some once common practices are clear violations of FERPA. For example:

Don’t Do This

  • Leave graded work in a box (or the like) to be picked up by students
  • Post grades by student name, UIN, or Social Security Number
  • Talk to parents (or most others) about student performance
  • Email grades
  • Send a mass email to the class where everyone’s email address is in a clear field

Do This Instead

  • Return graded work through a secure Learning Management System (LMS) like Canvas, or in person directly to the student where no one else can see the grade or feedback
  • Post grades in the gradebook of a secure LMS
  • Assume you are not allowed to discuss student performance with parents or anyone else not part of the instructional staff.
  • Use bcc when emailing the entire class

A good rule of thumb is to assume you are not allowed to share student information with anyone. The most common exception is that student data may be shared among University staff as necessary to carry out their responsibilities. So, the instructional staff of a course (e.g. the professor and TAs) can talk to each other about students’ performance and grades. An instructor and a student’s academic advisor may communicate (securely) about student performance. You may (and probably must) report final grades to the University. But beyond that, don’t share. Some students may have waived FERPA rights, but you probably won’t know that so still assume you can’t share information until you are certain about the rights being waived.

You should investigate FERPA more to stay within the law. This very short FERPA Tutorial from the Office of the Registrar can familiarize you with FERPA without taking much of your time. If you like short videos, have a look at FERPA in 5 Minutes.