Privacy and procurement
FERPA
Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act
The US federal law that protects student education records, and the exception that lets a school work with a product like ours.
What it is
FERPA gives parents, and students once they turn 18, rights over a student’s education records, and it limits when a school may disclose those records to anyone else.
It applies to schools and districts that receive US Department of Education funding, and to the vendors they bring in to handle education records on their behalf.
How a product is allowed to hold education records: the school official exception
- Perform a real institutional function
- The outside party has to be doing something the school would otherwise use its own employees to do.
- Be under the school’s direct control
- The school stays in control of how education records are used and maintained. The records do not become the vendor’s.
- Be bound by FERPA’s limits
- The vendor is subject to FERPA’s restrictions on using and re-disclosing personally identifiable information from those records.
- And the school has its own obligation
- A district that uses this exception must say in its annual FERPA notification what counts as a school official and what counts as a legitimate educational interest.
What PlannedQuest does
PlannedQuest is FERPA compliant. We operate as a school official under the district’s direct control, and student records stay the district’s records.
We use them to deliver the service the district engaged us for, and we do not re-disclose them.
Our standard data privacy agreement sets these obligations out in writing and is available to any district.