Author: Patsy Crawford | Posted: 21. December 2011 23:37
The December 2, 2011 amendments to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) regulations will make it easier for educational authorities to collect and more effectively use data to evaluate and improve early learning programs. The FERPA amendments provide greater flexibility in sharing students’ personally identifiable information (PII) contained in statewide longitudinal data systems (SLDS). An SLDS is intended to provide a vehicle whereby educators and school administrators can collect and analyze PII to determine student and school progress over time and report outcomes to the state educational authority or state education agency (SEA). Ideally, an SEA would be able to track and coordinate student and education program progress across all education programs within the state from pre-k through college and/or career; however, FERPA restrictions on disclosing student data without parental consent and restrictions on interagency data sharing have posed impediments.
The FERPA amendments add definitions and clarifications that broaden the accessibility of student data for the audit, evaluation, enforcement, and study of education programs. Under § 99.31(a)(3), FERPA allows disclosure of PII without consent to “authorized representatives” of the U.S. Comptroller General, U.S. Attorney General, ED Secretary, and SEAs and local educational authorities (FERPA-permitted entities) as may be necessary in connection with the audit, evaluation or enforcement of legal requirements related to federal- or state-supported education programs; however “authorized representatives” was not previously defined. The FERPA amendments define “authorized representative” to mean any individual or entity designated by the FERPA-permitted entity to conduct any audit or evaluation or any compliance or enforcement activity related to an education program, encompassing other institutions, agencies, and programs. “Education program” is defined in the amendments to mean any program that is principally engaged in the provision of education, including, but not limited to, early childhood, elementary, secondary and postsecondary education, special education, adult education, job training, and career and technical education. “Early childhood education program” is defined to include specified Head Start programs, child care programs, prekindergarten programs, and programs that serve children from birth through age six. In applying these definitions, for example, an LEA and an early learning program could enter into appropriate written agreements to share PII to evaluate the successfulness of the early learning program.
The amendments add §99.31(a)(6)(ii) to clarify that FERPA does not preclude FERPA-permitted entities with access to PII from entering into written agreements with organizations conducting studies and redisclosing PII on behalf of the educational agencies and institutions (e.g., school districts and postsecondary institutions) that disclosed the information to the FERPA-permitted entities. The written agreements must specify the purpose, scope, and duration of the study and the information to be disclosed; require the organization to use PII only to meet the purposes of the study; require the organization to conduct the study in a manner that does not permit personal identification of parents and students by anyone other than organization representatives with legitimate interests; and require the organization to destroy all PII when no longer needed for purposes of the study. In the Preamble to the final regulations, ED clarified that the redisclosure of PII under §99.31(a)(6)(ii) does not require the consent of the educational agencies and institutions that disclosed the PII to the FERPA-permitted entities. The FERPA amendments become effective on January 3, 2012.
