Discussion 2

The FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) of 1974 set a precedent for the way

that student records were kept, and primarily who has access to them. My current school goes

above and beyond when it comes to the privacy of student records. Most records that are not

electronic are stored in a vault located in the front office in files called Cumulative (Cume)

Folders. Teachers, or anyone else with legitimate educational interest, must sign out each

individual cume folder for a specified amount of time, then sign it back in under the supervision

of the campus secretary. Although we do all we can to protect these rights, most of our parents

are not even aware of the FERPA laws and the subsequent practices that we must keep these

records safe. The only challenge that we have received from a parent was when a parent was

upset about students being allowed to grade each other’s papers in class, mainly because her

child received a bad grade and felt insulted because their peers were able to see the grade. The

parent felt that there had to be a law or school policy against this but according to the outcome of

Owasso Independent School District No. I-011 v. Falvo, the court determined that peer grading

was not a violation of FERPA. “In upholding this practice, the Court held that although peer-

graded classroom work and assignments contained information directly related to a student, they

were not ‘records’ under the law because they were not ‘maintained by an educational agency or

institution or by a person acting for such agency or institution’” (La Morte, 2012, p. 110). Peer-

graded is a practice that is common to teachers as it provides an opportunity to not only go over

and explain work in class, but it lessens the workload of teachers who would otherwise have to

grade all the papers themselves. Administration backed up the teachers in this instance, much

like the Court upheld the practice in 2002.

References

This study source was downloaded by 100000825965683 from CourseHero.com on 04-05-2024 19:01:12 GMT -05:00

https://www.coursehero.com/file/40168663/Burley-DB-2docx/

La Morte, M. W. (2012). School law; cases and concepts (10th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ:

Pearson Education, Inc.

This study source was downloaded by 100000825965683 from CourseHero.com on 04-05-2024 19:01:12 GMT -05:00

https://www.coursehero.com/file/40168663/Burley-DB-2docx/ Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

The FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) of 1974 set a precedent for the way

that student records were kept, and primarily who has access to them. My current school goes

above and beyond when it comes to the privacy of student records. Most records that are not

electronic are stored in a vault located in the front office in files called Cumulative (Cume)

Folders. Teachers, or anyone else with legitimate educational interest, must sign out each

individual cume folder for a specified amount of time, then sign it back in under the supervision

of the campus secretary. Although we do all we can to protect these rights, most of our parents

are not even aware of the FERPA laws and the subsequent practices that we must keep these

records safe. The only challenge that we have received from a parent was when a parent was

upset about students being allowed to grade each other’s papers in class, mainly because her

child received a bad grade and felt insulted because their peers were able to see the grade. The

parent felt that there had to be a law or school policy against this but according to the outcome of

Owasso Independent School District No. I-011 v. Falvo, the court determined that peer grading

was not a violation of FERPA. “In upholding this practice, the Court held that although peer-

graded classroom work and assignments contained information directly related to a student, they

were not ‘records’ under the law because they were not ‘maintained by an educational agency or

institution or by a person acting for such agency or institution’” (La Morte, 2012, p. 110). Peer-

graded is a practice that is common to teachers as it provides an opportunity to not only go over

and explain work in class, but it lessens the workload of teachers who would otherwise have to

grade all the papers themselves. Administration backed up the teachers in this instance, much

like the Court upheld the practice in 2002.

References

This study source was downloaded by 100000825965683 from CourseHero.com on 04-05-2024 19:01:12 GMT -05:00

https://www.coursehero.com/file/40168663/Burley-DB-2docx/

La Morte, M. W. (2012). School law; cases and concepts (10th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ:

Pearson Education, Inc.

This study source was downloaded by 100000825965683 from CourseHero.com on 04-05-2024 19:01:12 GMT -05:00

https://www.coursehero.com/file/40168663/Burley-DB-2docx/ Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)