FERPA stands for the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which is a federal law that protects the privacy of student education records. The law applies to all schools that receive funds under an applicable program of the U.S. Department of Education. FERPA gives parents certain rights with respect to their childrens education records, including the right to access their childrens education records, the right to seek to have the records amended, and the right to have some control over the disclosure of personally identifiable information from the education records. When a student turns 18 years old, or enters a postsecondary institution at any age, the rights under FERPA transfer from the parents to the student ("eligible student").

FERPA applies to any educational institution that receives any federal funding, which includes all public schools and the vast majority of private institutions. Schools must have written permission from the parent or eligible student in order to release any information from a students education record. However, FERPA allows schools to disclose those records, without consent, to the following parties or under the following conditions:

• School officials with legitimate educational interest
• Other schools to which a student is transferring
• Specified officials for audit or evaluation purposes

FERPA does not protect the confidentiality of information in general, and therefore does not apply to information derived from a source other than education records (even if education records exist that contain that information). Congress amended FERPA in 1992 to expressly remove privacy protection for records created by a police or campus security agency "for the purpose of law enforcement". As a result of this change, it is illegitimate for a police or public safety department to cite FERPA in refusing to release an arrest record, an incident report, or the identities of students named in those documents.