[2] FERPA is a U.S. federal law that regulates access and disclosure of student education records.

Disclosure is permitted to parents of dependent students, and medical records are usually protected under FERPA rather than HIPAA.

[8] The law allowed students who apply to an educational institution such as graduate school permission to view recommendations submitted by others as part of the application.

[10] For example, in the Owasso Independent School District v. Falvo case, an important part of the debate was determining the relationship between peer-grading and "education records" as defined in FERPA.

The plaintiffs argued "that allowing students to score each other's tests [...] as the teachers explain the correct answers to the entire class [...] embarrassed [...] children", but they lost in a summary judgment by the district court.

[12] Legal experts have debated the issue of whether student medical records (e.g. records of therapy sessions with a therapist at an on-campus counseling center) might be released to the school administration under certain triggering events, such as when a student sues his or her college or university.

[13][14] Usually, student medical treatment records will remain under the protection of FERPA, not the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).