This is your must-read on the misuse of FERPA. Here’s how it begins:
It’s fitting that the 365-day stink-bomb that was 2014 ended with the U.S. Department of Education wadding up the last remaining shred of its credibility on FERPA and pulling the flusher with both hands.
It was that kind of year.
Like Pavlov’s dogs at suppertime, school and college legal departments reflexively yapped “FERPA” anytime a journalist came seeking public records that might be damaging to the institution’s image. But we discovered that the federal student privacy law isn’t all-powerful. Like any law, it must yield to more urgent imperatives.
Such as: the urge to humiliate your own students.
Now go read it all.