What is the primary purpose of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)?

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) primarily serves to provide parents with specific rights regarding their children’s educational records. Under FERPA, parents have the right to inspect and review their child’s education records, request amendments to those records, and restrict the disclosure of identifiable information from the records without consent. This law emphasizes the importance of privacy and grants parents the authority to manage how educational information is handled, ensuring that students' personal information is safeguarded.

This focus on parental rights distinguishes FERPA from other types of legislation that may focus on the rights of educators, data collection methods, or mental health records. While each of these topics is important in its own right, they do not align with the primary function of FERPA, which is specifically aimed at the protection of students' educational information.