Improving FERPA Access and Awareness, in Portland and Beyond
6 min read
In late August, I wrote about how different school districts and charter chains informed people about FERPA rights via their web sites. In the small number of schools and charter organizations reviewed, practices varied widely. Some organizations had no information obviously accessible online, where a smaller number of organizations did a pretty good job of making information about FERPA available. As a continuation of that work, I wanted to look at how parents and students are notified of their FERPA rights in the back to school paperwork. Online resources are one facet of the issue, but many districts still rely on paper forms to both gather information from families, and inform families of their rights.
In Portland Public School District in Portland, Oregon, parents received intake forms to start the new academic year. This blurb about FERPA - but not mentioning FERPA by name - describes how parents and students can learn more about and hopefully access their rights.
This screenshot shows the text as it was sent home to parents:
The text below quotes the screenshot to make the language sent home to parents more accessible:
For annual notices on Directory Information, Student Records, Military Recruiting and Protections of Pupil Rights, please see the District Parent and Student Handbook.
If you do not want your student to have access to district-provided email or on-line educational tools, please contact your school.
Under federal law and school policy, the school district may release the following information without prior parental consent: Student name, participation in officially recognized activities and sports, weight and height of members of athletic teams, degrees, honors, and awards received, major field of study, dates of attendance and the most recent school attended. If you do not want this information released, please contact your school to submit a written request. This form must be completed each year. Student photographs are commonly used in yearbooks, newsletters, websites and other school-related publications. If you do not want your student’s photograph used or released for these purposes or for news media, please contact your school to submit a written request. [Non-Release of Student Directory Information Form]
Student photographs are commonly used in yearbooks, newsletters, websites and other school-related publications. If you do not want your student’s photograph used or released for these purposes or for news media, please contact your school to submit a written request [Publicity Denial and Non-Release of information to School Directory Form].
Many schools or PTAs publish school directories that include parent/guardian contact information. If you do not want your name and contact information released for the school directory, please contact your school to submit a written request [Publicity Denial and Non-Release of information to School Directory Form].
This Is Confusing
To break this down, this single section - buried among multiple other forms - instructs parents to take the following different steps: 1. review the District Parent and Student Handbook (which is not included in the packet, and does not included any information on where to find the Handbook); 2. contact the school to ask about email and online tools; 3. contact the school to get a Non-Release form; and 4. contact the school to get a Publicity Denial form - and the Publicity Denial form covers two separate situations.
To summarize: parents who want to lean more about their rights under FERPA have been sent to 4 places for 5 reasons. None of the places to get additional information (with the exception of the general "contact your school") have been clearly defined. The directory information section lumps yearbook pictures alongside directory information, and then repeats the same clause verbatim and points parents to a different form.
Digging Deeper Doesn't Help
Things just get worse when you actually try and find specific information. Searching the PPS site for the District Parent and Student Handbook brings up this page as the first hit. The page title - District Parent and Student Handbook - is reassuring, but the contents link you to three separate documents: "Student Responsibilities, Rights, and Discipline Handbook", a "Calendar Template", and a "Parent/Student Handbook template". None of these documents align cleanly with the document referenced in the original form, and the content on this page appears geared toward school admins and not parents.
Attempting to find the other forms referenced in the original document ("Non-Release of Student Directory Information Form" and "Publicity Denial and Non-Release of information to School Directory Form") isn't any easier. Both forms are linked here, on this page which links over 25 forms covering random policies ranging from requesting VPN access to the "Dashboard SIS Metro Data Confidentiality Agreement."
The current process for learning about FERPA rights in Portland Public Schools is arcane to the point of worthless. From some superficial reviews of the processes in other districts around the country, I get the sense that PPS is about average. From looking at the available documentation from charter school chains, my preliminary take is that public schools are doing better than their charter counterparts.
Making FERPA More Accessible By Meeting Parents and Students Halfway
Here is how Portland Public Schools - and just about any other school district or charter chain in the US - could inprove their process for parents, students, and schools and ensure that they are in line with both the spirit and the letter of existing Federal privacy laws:
- Create a single page on their web site that describes FERPA rights, including the right to opt out.
- Create sane options that make sense to parents for opting out of information sharing. For example, parents should be able to opt in to sharing information in an internal private school directory and yearbooks while not having information publicly available and shared without notification.
- If they are not doing so already, schools should maintain an access log of when Directory Information is shared. This log should be accessible in the school office during the school year, and copied to the district at specified points throughout the year. District staff would maintain this access log over time, going back 5 to 7 years.
- The process for parents and students to access and review educational records as guaranteed under FERPA should be clearly defined. Implementation of student and parent rights should err on the side of ensuring that parent and student voice is supported and present in a student's educational record. While this issue goes beyond FERPA, student and parent rights under FERPA can be used constructively to support student voice.
- Provide training for PPS and school staff on aspects of FERPA, including what constitutes an educational record, and how to handle parental requests to both opt out of directory information and review student records.
FERPA is one small piece of the larger privacy puzzle - of equal concern is the gray area of data collected by edtech vendors that isn't covered under FERPA as an educational record. If we can get greater clarity of parent and student rights under FERPA, we can use this foundation to advocate for meaningful changes from schools, districts, vendors, and state and federal lawmakers.
