How Schools Are Violating FERPA: AI Training Data Scraping in Education

TL;DR Schools are unknowingly feeding student data to AI training pipelines through "educational tech" platforms. FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) is supposed to protect this data, but enforcement is nonexistent. One major platform has exposed 47 million K-12 student records. What You Need To Know FERPA covers what : Student grades, transcripts, disciplinary records, health info, special education plans, social security numbers FERPA covers who : Schools receiving federal education funding (99% of U.S. K-12 and higher ed) The violation : Schools sign contracts with EdTech platforms that train AI models on student data without explicit parental consent The loophole : FERPA allows data sharing for "legitimate educational interest" — platforms claim AI training counts The evidence : 1.2M+ students' reading levels, test scores, and behavioral data found in AI training datasets (Snyk, 2025) The enforcement : FERPA violations carry $0 penalties. No school has ever paid a fin