FAQ: FERPA — What Is It and Why Is It Failing Students?

What You Need To Know 55 million K-12 students are covered by FERPA — yet the law has never withdrawn federal funding from any institution in its 50-year history, its only real enforcement mechanism. 1,449 EdTech tools per district on average (Instructure/LearnPlatform, 2023), nearly all operating under the "school official exception" that makes vendor data access presumptively legal. $0.47 per profile : The College Board's Student Search Service sells access to student data at that unit rate to 1,700+ colleges and universities, generating revenue from records students and parents believe are protected. 62.4 million student records were exposed in the January 2025 PowerSchool breach — the largest K-12 data breach in U.S. history — affecting students managed through a system used by 14,000+ school districts. FERPA predates the smartphone by 33 years , the cloud by 25 years, and generative AI by nearly 50 years. It has never been substantially amended to address any of them. 7 Frequently