Thursday, August 9, 2012

Missouri Education Watchdog: Why You Should Read The FERPA Form This Year

Missouri Education Watchdog: Why You Should Read The FERPA Form This Year:


Why You Should Read The FERPA Form This Year

Many parents are busy filling out dozens of school forms right now.  Mixed in that paperwork is the FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) form that indicates your approval for the school to share your child's data. In years past most people paid little attention to this form as it seemed to apply mostly to sharingtranscripts with colleges, military recruiters and school ring companies. They were most critical to families with messy domestic situations, people in witness protection or extreme privacy fanatics.

But given the regulatory changes that were approved recently by the DoEd, more parents should be paying closer attention to what they put in those forms. The new FERPA rules to allow all data collected by the school to be shared with the Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and Corrections, private researchers