The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) covers a broad range of data privacy issues that range from handling financial aid forms and transcripts to posting test results.
FERPA protects a student’s confidential data by mandating that schools manage their records by upholding strict privacy standards. In this blog post, you’ll find out what the law mandates, how far it reaches, and how document management simplifies FERPA compliance.
Table of Contents
- What is FERPA?
- What are the rights that FERPA grants?
- Importance for educational institutions
- Best practices for FERPA compliance
- How DocuWare supports FERPA compliance
- Case Study: College streamlines admissions and registration to better meet FERPA privacy requirements
- Resources and further reading
- Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
What is FERPA?
Enacted in 1974, FERPA protects students' personally identifiable information (PII) from unauthorized use. Any school that receives money from the federal government — including all public and private schools, community colleges and universities — is subject to its rules.
FERPA allows parents to review their children's records, request corrections, and manage who can see or use their child's records that contain PII. Once a student reaches 18 or attends a college, university or other post-secondary school, these rights are transferred to them.
Even though FERPA was initially designed to safeguard the privacy of student records, all the changes and different interpretations over the years have made it tricky to know for sure what counts as protected information.
What are the rights that FERPA grants?
FERPA extends these privileges to parents and eligible students.
Educational institutions must:
- Notify them of their rights under FERPA annually.
- Allow them to view their records.
- Give them the chance to challenge incorrect information or violations of student privacy through a formal process.
- Permit them to add written notes to their records if they disagree with something.
- Prevent information from being shown to third parties without their consent. This ruling covers sharing or transferring information in any way, including by email or through an online system.
Additional FERPA compliance requirements
Who can view student records
In addition to parents and eligible students; teachers, principals, guidance counselors, and certain other school employees can access student records, but only if their jobs require it.
If an outside group or individual is doing work for the school (like a contractor or software company), they can only access student records if they’re doing something the school would normally use its own staff for, or if the school maintains direct control over how the data is used and managed. These external resources can only use the information for the agreed upon purpose and can’t share it again with others unless they get permission from the student or parent.
Each school decides who counts as having a true educational need to view this protected information under FERPA’s rules.
There are exceptions. For example, during an emergency, school staff can share student information — even without consent — if there’s an urgent, clear and immediate threat, like a health or safety emergency. They can only share this information with certain people, such as police, emergency responders, public health officials, medical staff and parents. Schools get to decide which situations are considered an emergency, and this approval lasts for the duration of the crisis — it doesn’t allow open-ended access.
How long must student records be retained?
FERPA doesn’t set any rules on how long schools need to keep student education records. The only requirement is that schools can’t destroy a file while there’s an open request to review it. This means it’s usually best for schools and colleges to keep physical and electronic records forever. In addition, even though the Department of Education recognizes that data breaches can threaten student privacy, FERPA doesn’t make it mandatory for schools to use any particular security protections for these records.
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Which documents are considered educational records?
An education record must directly relate to a student and be maintained by an educational institution or by a person acting for them.
Records that are covered by FERPA include:
Transcripts Assessment results Course enrollment Financial information Disciplinary records Standardized test results Health records created or maintained by a school’s medical staff Records of services provided to students under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) In practice, courts have ruled that nor every document that names or refers to a student is protected by FERPA. FERPA usually only applies to records related to educational activity.
Records that are not subject to FERPA include:
Quizzes and assignments that are graded in class by other students. Messages concerning students that are saved on teachers’ individual computers or shared between students and their advisors, provided these emails aren’t filed in the formal student record. Directory information such as student name, address, phone number, major and dates of attendance may be disclosed unless the eligible student or parent opts out. FERPA mandates that schools must notify them of their right to opt-out. Content posted on blogs. Records held by campus organizations, such as student media outlets, if the school doesn’t maintain them. One-off copies of a teacher’s personal notes. Photos or videos taken on school grounds, unless they’re made part of a student’s official education record. For example, if they are added to a disciplinary file. FERPA also doesn’t extend to student information used:
- When students want to transfer to another institution: Schools are allowed to share student records with another educational organization where the student plans to enroll or transfer.
- To meet legal requirements: Schools can provide information when responding to an official court order or valid subpoena.
- To find out whether a student is eligible for financial aid: Information may be provided to determine if a student meets criteria for financial aid, to outline the financial aid’s requirements, or to monitor compliance with financial aid agreements.
While FERPA does not allow private lawsuits, violations may open the door to legal action under other privacy laws or regulations, particularly in cases of negligence. Failing to secure digital records may lead to costly data breaches, including notifications, remediation and potential fines.
Schools and universities want to avoid complaints about inaccurate records and litigation over privacy violations. The most severe penalty for non-compliance is the potential loss of federal funding. This can jeopardize the institution’s financial stability and operations.
Eligible students or parents can file complaints with the U.S. Department of Education’s Family Policy Compliance Office (FPCO), which may launch formal investigations. If privacy rules are broken, it can damage the confidence that students, families, and the wider community have in your institution, which might result in lasting harm to your reputation.
Best practices for FERPA compliance
Implementing a secure data management system
Document management software (DMS) is a digital solution that enables organizations to process, capture, store, manage and track documents. By tightly managing confidential information, you can develop compliance-friendly processes that start, execute and complete in a stable, predictable, measurable way.
A DMS offers:
- Safe archiving: Every document is securely stored with a unique ID and easily searchable by meta data fields like name, date, keyword, or any other criteria your institution sets.
- Retention schedule enforcement: Documents are automatically designated to be kept or deleted based on specific policies you create for each type of record.
- Access controls: Users with the right permissions can locate and read each record, while changes to the actual content are restricted.
- Audit trails: Provide a complete record of who interacted with each document, tracking its journey from start to finish.
- Air-tight security: To fend off unauthorized access, a DMS uses encryption, multi-factor authentication, or single sign-on and strict cybersecurity protocols.
- Disaster recovery and business continuity: Cloud software enables you to handle unexpected crises or breaches with multiple backups housed in geographically dispersed data centers.
Employee training and awareness
Engaging employees in ongoing training is required to meet many compliance regulations, such as HIPAA, and FERPA, among others. Failure to comply with these requirements not only puts your company at risk by not ensuring your employees are properly trained; it subjects your organization to strict fines and penalties.
This training covers the key laws related to how student records can be used and shared, breaks down what responsibilities each staff member and instructor has, offers tips for safeguarding student privacy, and details what can happen if these rules aren’t followed.
Training should incorporate actionable information security best practices that should be incorporated into their daily roles and responsibilities.
Regular compliance audits
Make it a habit to run both in-house and third-party audits to check and find out if your school is up to speed with FERPA standards. These checks should cover every part of how you manage and store student data. Use what you learn from these audits to spot any security problems, like unauthorized access, weak encryption or lack of staff training. Fix these issues quickly — this might mean creating new policies, improving your security, or giving staff more training. Keep an eye on these changes to make sure they’re working and that you continue meeting FERPA requirements.
Data access controls
Document management software should ensure that documents and data are captured, processed and stored securely and protected against misuse or loss. Make sure that a robust rights structure controls which documents and data users can view, retrieve, edit, export, modify and delete. This enforces confidentiality because the information is only accessible to authorized users. Defining access rights guarantees that documents cannot be changed without authorization and that changes can be tracked.
How DocuWare supports FERPA compliance
Secure document storage
DocuWare provides user authentication, HTTPS data transfer, 256-bit encryption, multi-level access control and traceability, and robust protection against malware and other forms of cyberattacks, as well as other security features.
With the software, your staff can retrieve archived records instantly for reference and to stay compliant. It stores both active files and archived records and secures them with comprehensive access rights, encryption and protection against cyberattacks. The solution can create multiple backups and log changes, as well as control who accesses, prints or deletes documents or records with complete audit trails.
Controlled data access
Implementing access controls ensures that electronic files are only accessible to authorized users. Using permissions and user authentication safeguards sensitive information and maintains confidentiality
Access should be provided via a unique username and password. This means you can assign access rights to an individual, group, and job or role level for more control. Strong user authentication is also crucial.
Audit trails and monitoring
An audit trail, sometimes called an audit log, is a time-stamped record that tracks user actions and system events related to a document, transaction or process. Audit trails capture user activity, such as document access, edits, approvals and transfers, by recording the date and time, user identity, and action performed. These records provide a permanent, tamper-resistant log of all changes and interactions within a computer system. Audit trails show that your organization controls data access and proves document integrity.
Workflow automation for compliance
A well-defined workflow introduces precision to your processes. Documents follow the same multi-step path from document creation or submission to completion of the workflow, ensuring accuracy and compliance at each stage.
Case study: College streamlines admissions and registration to better meet FERPA privacy requirements
Roberts Wesleyan College is a Christian liberal arts college located near Rochester, New York, with a student body of 2,000. Before implementing DocuWare, the College kept admissions and registration files in physical cabinets in the main office, and space for storing documents was quickly becoming an issue. The College's management team wanted to more easily meet privacy requirements outlined in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) by automatically limiting access to confidential information. Their goals included:
- Implementing secure storage of prospective students' applications, transcripts, letters, ACT and SAT scores. They also wanted to safeguard major request forms, transcripts, academic alerts and other information.
- Tracking the receipt of admissions documents and forwarding them to the admissions counselor and admissions director for approval.
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Increasing enrollment by simplifying the admissions process were their other goals.Integrating document management with AdmitGold admissions software solved a major workflow issue.
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Reducing printing and storage costs.
With the updated system, the College can bring all information together and gives faculty advisors tailored access to DocuWare, depending on each student’s major. This eliminated storing student information in multiple locations and ensured everyone refers to the most current document. Having one universal database gives the staff the tools they need to answer questions quickly, thereby decreasing student frustration.
"Before DocuWare, we would have to schedule a meeting to determine if a student could receive transfer credit. Today this is done virtually with a predefined workflow, saving time and clearing excess meetings from staff schedules,” College President Deanna Porterfield explains. “DocuWare gives us the framework to meet our goal of increasing enrollment. Our workflow is simple and transparent, speeding admissions processing time and allowing us to simplify things for our students,” Porterfield concludes.
Resources and further reading
Official FERPA Guidelines
Compliance Checklist
What does FERPA stand for?
FERPA is an acronym for the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. It covers everything from financial aid documents and academic transcripts to the publication of test results, all to ensure students' personal information stays private. Schools are required by FERPA to secure and oversee student records with high privacy standards. FERPA applies to every school that gets federal funding.
Does FERPA apply to private schools?
FERPA protects student privacy when families have Education Savings Accounts (ESAs). With ESAs, state money goes into a parent’s authorized account; enabling families to pay for things like private school tuition or other approved education costs.
Who does FERPA apply to?
Students’ personal details are safeguarded under FERPA to make sure no one can use or share them without permission. Any school getting federal money has to obey FERPA guidelines, whether it’s a public or private institution, K-12 school, community college, or university.
What are examples of a FERPA violation?
Unauthorized disclosure: Sharing a student’s grades, disciplinary notes, or personal information with someone who isn’t authorized or doesn’t have valid educational reasons to view them or circulating them without the student’s approval.
Unsecured student records: Placing student files, whether digital or physical, in an unsecured location where unauthorized individuals can access them, and they can be lost or damaged.
Denied mandated access: Denying an eligible student or their parents access to the student’s records or delaying access beyond the time allowed by law.
What happens if FERPA is violated?
The biggest risk for not following FERPA is that your school could lose federal money, putting its finances and daily operations at risk. Students or parents with complaints can reach out to the Department of Education’s Family Policy Compliance Office, which can start a formal investigation. While FERPA doesn’t authorize individuals to take legal action against a school, violations could still expose an institution to lawsuits initiated through other privacy regulations.
