FERPA and Student Learning Assessment

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, known as FERPA, is a federal law protecting the privacy of education records.  Any personally identifiable information that is linked to a student and makes it possible to identify that student would be protected under FERPA.

School officials may have access to students’ education records only in the event of a legitimate educational interest—i.e. the education record is needed for that official to meet his/her/their professional responsibilities.  An obvious example would be an academic advisor who requires a student’s education record in order to recommend which courses the student must take or to counsel the student with respect to his/her/their academic performance.

School officials who serve on the Academic Assessment Coordinating Committee and who review assessment findings and supporting evidence do not have a legitimate educational interest in the education record of individual students. Representatives from accrediting agencies who might wish to review assessment reports and findings most definitely should not have access to student records.

For this reason, when student artifacts are being submitted as part of the annual goal report or program review, all identifiable information should be scrubbed from the document.  Likewise, if “raw” data are attached as supporting evidence for an assessment finding, all identifying information (students’ names, ID numbers) should be removed.  This is especially important, because once the report is published and accessible electronically, it is no longer password protected.

When assessments are course-embedded, departments should avoid identifying the faculty associated with the scores or assessment findings as well.  This information may be useful to a department chair or whoever is coordinating the assessments, but is should not be for AACC’s consumption.

As we prepare to report on 2019 - 2020 assessment results, keep in mind these ways to protect student privacy and remain in compliance with an important federal regulation. 

For further information about FERPA, please visit the following site: https://studentprivacy.ed.gov/sites/default/files/resource_document/file/SRO_FAQs_2-5-19_0.pdf.