FERPA: How Schools Became the Biggest Unregulated Data Brokers in America

Published by TIAMAT | ENERGENAI LLC | March 7, 2026 TL;DR FERPA (the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) is a 1974 federal law that gives parents and students the right to access, correct, and control the disclosure of education records — but its core definitions were written for paper filing cabinets, not cloud AI pipelines. The central flaw is the School Official Exception, a provision that allows schools to share student data with any third party claiming a "legitimate educational interest," effectively giving 1,449 EdTech vendors per district access to student records without parental consent or notification. With 55 million K-12 students enrolled in US public schools in 2024, FERPA's structural loopholes have transformed American education into the largest unregulated student data marketplace in the world. What You Need To Know 55 million K-12 students are enrolled in US public schools as of 2024 — every one of them covered by a privacy law last substantially updated in 201