Yes. The institution is required to publish an annual notification of rights for students. At IU this publication is: "Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities and Conduct."
The Family Policy Compliance Office in the U.S. Department of Education maintains a website that contains a significant amount of information at: http://www.ed.gov/offices/OM/fpco.
A.) With limited exceptions, "education records" are defined within the regulations as "those records that are:
1) Directly related to a student; and
2) Maintained by an educational agency or institution or by a party acting for the agency or institution."Under this broad definition of "education records," FERPA protects such records as grades, transcripts, and records about allegations of academic dishonesty.
One FERPA exception of special importance to faculty members states: "Records of instructional, supervisory, and administrative personnel and educational personnel ancillary to those persons that are kept in the sole possession of the maker of the record, and are not accessible or revealed to any other person except a temporary substitute for the maker of the record." The private and personal records defined in this exception are not subject to examination by students under FERPA.
Yes. The word "records" means any information recorded in any way.
If your e-mail messages contain information that is directly related to the student, those messages would be included within the definition of "education records."
Personally identifiable information from a student's education record cannot be released to a third party without the student's written consent (signed and dated) unless specified exceptions in the regulations apply. Furthermore, students have a right to review their education records.
Section 99.31 describes 15 different exceptions to FERPA's prohibition against the release of personally identifiable information from a student's records without written consent. The first of these exceptions is important to faculty members. The exception states: "The disclosure is to other school officials, including teachers, within the agency or institution whom the agency or institution has determined to have legitimate educational interests."
The Department of Education does not mandate a specific definition for the term "legitimate educational interest." However, the Department provides a "sample" definition that many institutions have adopted. The sample definition states that officials have a "legitimate educational interest if the official needs to review an education record in order to fulfill his or her professional responsibility."
Those practices would be prohibited. Faculty members should not post student grades by name, social security number, or student identification without the specific written consent of each student. Faculty members could post grades by code word or random number that only the faculty member and student know, but the list should not be in alphabetical order by student name. Furthermore, the common practice of leaving graded papers in unsecured locations for students to pick up later allows almost anyone to see those records, and would be considered a FERPA violation.
FERPA only governs the release of information to third parties. It would not be a violation to release information to a student about his/her own grades, provided appropriate steps were taken to confirm the student's identity.
Parents should be encouraged to speak with their son or daughter directly. In limited circumstances, institutions may release personally identifiable information to parents from a student's education records. However, it would not be advisable for an individual faculty member to make this determination.
Statements based on your personal assessments and observations of the student are not derived from "education records" covered by FERPA. However, you must obtain the student's written consent if our letter includes such information as the student's overall GPA, or grades in specific courses.
The forms that accompany recommendation letters will often indicate whether a student is waiving a right of access. While the institution cannot require students to sign such a waiver, faculty members may decline to provide a reference without it.
Institutions may release information for research purposes without students' written consent if done to develop, validate, or administer predictive tests; administer student aid programs; or improve instruction. However, the release of information can only be done if the research is conducted in a manner that does not permit personal identification of parents and students by individuals other than the researchers; and the information is destroyed when no longer needed for the purposes for which the study was conducted.