Department of Education

Family Education Rights & Privacy Act (FERPA)Bold text This act is also known as the Buckley amendment as Sen. James Buckley of New York introduced the language in 1974. His intent was twofold: to ensure that parents and adult students could correct errors and address damaging material in the records file and to ensure that schools would develop and follow policies guaranteeing access to the records by the parent or student. The bill tied participation in federal funding to schools to encourage compliance. Education records were defined as those that pertain directly to the student and maintained by the institution.

In 1992, an amendment clarified that police records containing the names of students were not protected by the act. This exclusion of police records is important as colleges and universities have tried to use FERPA to deny journalists access to records that would clearly be in the public domain outside of academia, including for such issues as:

• parking tickets issued to athletes
• minutes of public meetings
• findings or investigations into academic dishonesty
• names of individuals receiving tickets to university sporting events

None of these examples are related to FERPA or comply with its intent. (1)