Laws & Policy
Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)
A US law that gives parents rights over their child's education records at school, and limits when a school or its vendors may share those records.
- Educators and school leaders
- Parents
- Policymakers and staff
This is general information, not legal advice.
What parents should know
FERPA is the school-records law. It is different from COPPA, which covers personal information collected from children under 13 on apps and websites. If your child uses AI at school, FERPA is the law that asks who can see that schoolwork and those prompts. This page is general information, not legal advice.
On this page
What is FERPA?
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, 20 U.S.C. § 1232g, gives parents rights over education records at schools that receive certain federal funds. Those rights usually transfer to the student at 18. Parents can inspect records, ask for a correction, and expect the school to control who else sees them.
A vendor the school hires can be part of that picture. When a school shares education records with a contractor so the contractor can do work the school would otherwise do itself, FERPA has a school-official exception with conditions. The US Department of Education explains the basics at studentprivacy.ed.gov/ferpa. Whether a specific AI tool fits that exception depends on the contract and the data, which is a question for the school and its counsel.
Why FERPA matters
A chat log from a class assignment can feel like a private message and still be an education record. Parents often hear COPPA in consumer apps and assume the same rule covers the school login. It may not. COPPA and FERPA can both matter, and they answer different questions.
The practical question for a family is simple. Who at school can open the prompts, who outside the school can, and how long the records are kept. A district that cannot answer those questions has not finished the privacy review, even if the tool is popular.
How it shows up in practice
- A parent asks the school whether student prompts in an AI tool are education records and who on staff can read them.
- A principal checks the vendor agreement before turning a student AI tool on for a grade.
- A teacher uses the tool for a writing conference and knows the transcript is visible to the assigned adults, not to the whole internet.
- A family keeps the home AI account separate from the school account, because the two products may have different viewers.
How HeyOtto helps
HeyOtto for Schools is a separate deployment from the family app. School data handling is designed to align with FERPA's requirements around education records and directory information. That is a design statement, not a claim that HeyOtto is FERPA certified.
- Teachers and advisors have dashboards, and schools choose which student tools are on.
- The family app is a parent-created account. It is not the same viewer list as a school deployment.
- Ask the school for the agreement if you need the legal answer for your district.
For schools
Request a demoFAQs
Is FERPA the same as COPPA?
No. COPPA is a consumer-privacy law about personal information collected online from children under 13. FERPA is an education-records law for schools that receive certain federal funds. A school AI tool can raise both. Read them separately, and treat this page as general information, not legal advice.
Do parents have a right to see school AI chats?
If the chats are education records, FERPA gives parents a right to inspect them, with the usual school process and exceptions. Not every line a student types is automatically an education record. The school decides how it classifies the data and should be able to explain that choice.
Does FERPA apply to an app I download at home?
Usually no. FERPA follows the school and its education records. A family app you sign up for at home is more often a COPPA question if your child is under 13. If the school required the app and put student records in it, ask the school which law it is relying on.
What should I ask before my child's class uses AI?
Ask who can see prompts, whether the vendor may use them to train a model, how long they are kept, and whether parents can inspect them. Those four answers tell you more than a badge that says compliant.
Sources
Last reviewed September 26, 2026. Law entries are reviewed every quarter.
This is general information, not legal advice.