Alternate term for student records, as covered under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1976.
The cumulative file on a student’s progress through a school, including basic identifying information, comments about student and family, some kinds of physical and health information, comments about behavior, notes about discipline or counseling given, attendance data, scores from various standardized tests, and courses or classes taken and grades received. When a student transfers to another school or applies for admission to a college, the latter information is summarized for the new school in the form of a transcript. The student record cumulates and is generally kept in the school or system office for immediate reference while the student is enrolled; afterward most of it is maintained as part of the permanent student record. (Some kinds of special confidential reports are kept separately from the main student record.) Student records were once totally under the control of the school, but under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974, popularly called the Buckley Amendment, schools risk loss of federal funds if they fail to give parents access to the record of students under 18, and the school can by law release the student record to others outside the school only with the parent’s authorization; over age 18 the student has control over access to the record and must authorize any access, including that by parents. The law gives the parents the chance to request corrections or clarifications of any misconceptions or skewed comments that may be entered into a child’s records and mistakenly be passed on as true; if the request is denied, an appeals procedure is provided. It is important for parents to review the record and attempt to correct it, if necessary, because, long after the people who wrote comments in the record are gone, others will refer to the record in writing recommendations and reports, such as those requested by colleges or employers.