Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act  of 1974 (FERPA or the Buckley Amendment) is a United States federal law codified at, with implementing regulations in title 34, part 99 of the Code of Federal Regulations. The regulations provide that educational agencies and institutions that receive funding under a program administered by the U. S. Department of Education must provide students with access to their education records, an opportunity to seek to have the records amended, and some control over the disclosure of information from the records. With several exceptions, schools must have a student's consent prior to the disclosure of education records. Examples of situations affected by FERPA include school employees divulging information to someone other than the child's parents about a child's grades or behavior, and school work posted on a bulletin board with a grade.

This privacy policy also governs how state agencies transmit testing data to federal agencies. For example see Education Data Network.

The law allows students who apply to an educational institution such as graduate school permission to view recommendations submitted by others as part of the application. However, on standard application forms, students are given the option to waive this right.

FERPA specifically excludes employees of an educational institution if they are not students.

The act is also referred to as the Buckley Amendment, named for one of its proponents, Senator James L. Buckley of New York.