The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) is a Federal law that protects the privacy of student education records. Because The University of Texas at Dallas Education Research Center brings together individual level student data, FERPA compliance is integral to operations.
While The University of Texas at Dallas Education Research Center only receives de-identified data (i.e., no names, birth dates, or social security numbers), because small cell sizes can potentially identify individual students, strict policies and procedures are in place to protect these data in a secure environment.
To view the federal code related to FERPA, click here.
The contractual obligations that are required to ensure FERPA compliance are included in the confidentiality agreement that every researcher must sign before gaining access to Texas Education Research Center data. In general, to ensure that there is no possibility of identifying an individual student it is required that cell sizes below five be suppressed and that all work output be reviewed for FERPA compliance.
Learn more about FERPA.
Page last updated on May 2, 2013.