Guest entry: Advocating for FERPA rights

A number of my students at Keuka College have been working on policy and advocacy projects that I wanted to share.  The students researched a topic of their interest, met with their legislators, and developed a broad action plan to increase awareness of their topics.  

 This information is provided courtesy of Sarah Watson, a graduate student who is interested in promoting increased awareness of privacy concerns and FERPA in context of computerized record keeping and documentation.

Extra note: I was really happy to see one of my students tackle this topic - I have seen many privacy breaches because of improper permission settings in common software used by many school districts, most notably the IEP Direct product.  School support personnel need to be regularly inserviced on how to use permission settings so that providers do not have blanket access to a district's entire special education database.  This is a common problem.

Additionally, procedures need to be tightened so that notices about IEP meeting schedules that have protected information are not sent out in global emails to multiple agencies who are all providing services to school districts.


"I am an occupational therapy graduate student at Keuka college. I have created an infographic for my Global Advocacy class on Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).

The infographic has been a result of a semester long project on the policy process. I encourage everyone to read it and watch the video. I am very passionate on the topic of FERPA and the educational community that it impacts as a future occupational therapist.  Protecting student privacy is so important and can happen only when the right steps are taken. 

Please SHARE and feel free to comment and ask questions.

This assignment is for my final project and my goal is to have several people look it over! Thank you!"

Click here to open up the chart in your browser!

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