What Bricker didn’t mention in the OP, but which is in the linked article, was that this student had some issues and was on an Individualized education program. If I had a child in that situation I sure as hell would want to see all her grades. And I’d be suspicious if she wouldn’t show them to me.
I was on site council for the local high school, and I was well aware of this rule. Not being able to alert parents seemed frustrating to the teachers and administration. On the other hand there was also a problem of parents kicking their 18 year old kids out of the house which did not help their concentration in school at all.
The parents want exceptions for emotionally vulnerable children. I’d like to know how that would work.
My school system had something called ‘Age of Majority’ which was for students who turned 18 while attending school. It meant that you could write your own notes for absences, but if you went crazy with it they could and sometimes did, get in touch with your parents to let them know that their precious ittle Suzie or Bobby had been absent 50 times that semester, and while they had valid notes, graduation was iffy and they should probably come in for a chat.
It sounds to me as though the school district/school did nothing wrong. The daughter is 18, an adult and she made the choice who was allowed access to the records in accordance with the law. The part I find surprising is when the parents realized they couldn’t access the records, why didn’t they have a conversation with the daughter prior to the morning of graduation?
Sounds like the school followed the law. An 18 year old is an adult, the student used her majority status to keep the school from reporting to her parents. If her parents have a problem it’s with their daughter and not the school. The school should have responded to the parents inquiries and told them they could not see their daughters records, failing to do that was poor performance on the part of the school but any perceived harm was due to their daughter’s actions and not the school’s.
I didn’t know about the IEP. That surprises me because I wonder how much input the parents had in that being put together. If they were a part of the process then it becomes more confusing as to why they weren’t in the loop about the grade.
It seems to me that the law only requires them not to divulge the information, not to withhold that the student asked them to do so. While that doesn’t mean they are obligated to tell, it does mean that blaming it entirely on the law is not accurate, and blaming things on the law that are your choice is a pet peeve of mine.
In my opinion, I think that simply putting N/A and not divulging that the information was withheld has hints of deception in a way I do not like. Either they should have a straight policy of not divulging grades at all if you’re over 18, or they should divulge that they are not revealing the information due to the law. Heck, probably both.
If I were handling that school, there would be a waiver the student should sign to divulge their grades to their parents. If they don’t sign it, they don’t divulge. If they sign it, they’ve given permission. And then the parents would be informed about the law.
*What *the school did was not wrong. How they did it was what is, um, suboptimal. I shall pile on to the overloaded bandwagon of that a flat, cold “Section XYZ provisions requires the student’s consent to release that information” should have been an apt response within the Spirit of the Law (I mean, what would the school have done had the parents shown up in person to demand a Parent-Teacher meeting? Escape through the restroom window? Pull the fire alarm?)
The commentator’s apparent consideration that the school should weasel their way around the law baffles me. Like someone said upthread, 18 means something: legal adulthood due to age does NOT get stayed by remaining a dependent for tax purposes.
Apparently the daughter deliberately instructed the school to not communicate anything about *that *class. Which I believe that the school would have been on firm footing to say “we will however communicate that they should ask you”. It is not reasonable to think the legislator intended for the school to not even be able to answer “sorry, can’t, there’s a law”.
Whether you think it’s fair or not is irrelevant.
FWIW, I noticed this in my daughter’s handbook a year ago or so. I wasn’t looking for it, it’s just included in it:
As far as saying something to the parents, I agree they didn’t have to and shouldn’t and rules are possibly written in such a way that they’re not even allowed to communicate about the student.
If the kid is 18, she’s an adult. If she went through the trouble of requesting the school not communicate with her parents, that’s on her. None of this is the school’s fault. She made a decision and it has consequences. But the consequences for not letting your parents know you aren’t graduating because you failed a class probably aren’t all that huge.
If the school wanted to say anything, I think the only responsible thing they could say is something along the lines of “Due to your daughter’s age, we can only discuss school matters with her”, and leave it at that.
The only way it could work is if the parents had themselves appointed guardians- which would only happen if the 18 year old was incapable of making her own decisions. It’s the same standard I would have to meet to be appointed my 78 year old mother’s guardian. Most students with IEPs probably don’t meet that standard- some will, but their parents probably started working on getting appointed well before their 18th birthday.
Other than that, an 18 year old is an adult. In most states, an 18 year old with an IEP has all of the former parental rights to attend the meeting, consent to evaluation and approve of changes. And the parents no longer have any rights and can only be invited to the meeting with the 18 year old student's permission.
As best as I remember, IEP meetings take place yearly. I suspect the student turned 18 very late in the school year - if the IEP meeting took place in October and the student turned 18 in May, the parents would have been kept in the loop right up until that birthday. It certainly doesn't appear that they found out they lost access to her grades in January.
Huh?
I think it would be fair for the parents to revoke financial support if the kid hides school records from them.
I said I agree that once past 18 it is up to the child to decide about their school records.
No, it isn’t “an answer in itself”, and the school was absolutely wrong to ignore the parents’ request. The school had an ethical obligation to acknowledge the parents’ request because it was an important matter and parents have a legitimate interest in their children’s welfare, and if the school is prevented from providing the requested information by some code of confidentiality or, in this case, by law, then their ethical obligation in such an instance is to say so. Neither the law nor any reasonable standard of ethics says that the daughter’s request to keep her grades confidential is itself confidential.
To draw an analogy, if someone in authority asks you a question that you’re legally not obliged to answer, and you choose to exercise that right, the correct and only appropriate recourse is to say so. Your approach is equivalent to pretending that you’ve suddenly gone deaf.
It sounds like she was borderline to pass and they knew it, which is why they were checking up. And frankly, if you can’t trust your 18 year old not to bald-faced lie to you about her grades, that’s a much bigger issue than whatever else is going on.
If the parents were automatically kicked out of access to all accounts when she turned 18 and they knew that their daughter had to opt in to giving them permission, then this whole issue would have started where it needed to be–between the daughter and the parents.
If the girl had an IEP, the parents had been informed that once she hit 18, FERPA applied and they would be out of the loop unless their daughter chose to let them in. There are special forms for this. Furthermore, FERPA technically doesn’t let you confirm or deny if a student is even enrolled in a class: I am not sure they could respond to the parents at all. Like I said, the issue is not that this was a FERPA violation: it’s that it’s hard to stand behind FERPA when the school has almost certainly been violating it like marijuana laws on a Dead tour.
Sure they could - they just have to answer in generalities. Such as “We can’t discuss that with you- you will have to speak with your daughter” (which doesn’t really disclose even that the daughter is enrolled in the school , although the school might be able to release that information).To use a related example, my line of work often involves calling substance abuse treatment programs to see how our clients are doing. We require them to sign a release when they enroll in a program , but unsurprisingly they often don’t. When we call or email the program, they respond with something very generic like “I can’t disclose any information without a release” not “He didn’t sign a release” ( which kind of implies he’s enrolled)-
And what does the school say when they follow your advice, and then the kid sues them for violating FERPA? The daughter’s argument writes itself: I wanted my grade to be confidential and I wanted my request to be confidential, both rights I am entitled to under FERPA.
Except that, by telling the parents that the student wants her grades confidential, the school is effectively telling the parents that her grades are not good, which nullifies the entire purpose of being able to keep your grades confidential from your parents when you turn 18.
Okay then, by not telling parents whether or not the student wants her grades confidential, the school is effectively telling the parents that she wants her grades confidential, which in turn is effectively telling the parents that her grades are not good.
The parents KNEW her grades were confidential. If she had an IEP, they signed paperwork acknowledging that (if the school didn’t have them do this, the school fucked up. But it’s a very common thing and legally required, so I imagine they did).
With no IEP, it might have been a genuine misunderstanding, but with an IEP, it’s more like ignoring requests after you’ve told them you can’t answer.
…I believe this is known in many parts of the universe as the Kobayashi Maru scenario.
… and wind them apron strings right around their neck! This sounds like a great recipe to teach kids to tell their parents to f— off when their parents are old and infirm, because it’s not treating one’s kids with any level of adult respect. What goes around comes around.