There are no parent-teacher conferences in college.
If a parent wants to know their student’s grades, the status of their student’s meal plan, or if they have dropped out of school without telling anyone, the school needs signed permission from the student and a personal identification number from the parent. Without that, because of the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), the school can tell parents next to nothing.
Without explicit student permission, this strict privacy policy prevents parents from knowing what classes a student is taking, even if parents are footing the bill.
Yet many colleges are freely handing over troves of FERPA-protected information to be analyzed for political research in exchange for a short report measuring the success of campus voter registration activities.
The report, released in federal election years, is called the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE) and it is a project of Tufts University’s Institute for Democracy and Higher Education (IDHE) in Medford, Massachusetts.
Privacy Protections
According to FERPA, there are only three conditions under which a college or university can share personally identifiable information from an education record of a student without the student’s consent.
Disclosures are allowed if the information is being given to organizations conducting studies for, or on behalf of, educational agencies or institutions to:
- Develop, validate, or administer predictive tests.
- Administer student aid programs.
- Improve instruction.
Nancy Thomas, IDHE director at the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University, told The Epoch Times via email that NSLVE falls within the “studies exception” to FERPA.
“Its purpose is to improve student learning,” Ms. Thomas said. “If you review our website, you will see dozens of documents about educating for democracy year-round, not just during an election season, and using elections as that ‘teachable moment’ for students as responsible citizens in a democracy. We do other research on learning conditions for civic learning. We help campuses understand and use their NSLVE reports, but we always stress the educational value of this information.”
By Beth Brelje
