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Education Contracts & FERPA

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Justin_Bathon
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

This product would be very useful for both higher education and P-12 applications if it was FERPA compliant. FERPA came up a few times in the HIPPA section, but it is worth examining on its own as FERPA compliance is likely more of a contractual issue than a technical issue. Schools (P-12 and higher ed.) have a responsibility to keep student data private and only contact with software companies who agree contractually to abide by the same data responsibilities. Perhaps Airtable already has all the technical data controls needed to be FERPA compliant and the only issue is the necessary contractual guarantees to meet educational standards.

The educational software market is a massive multi-billion dollar market and growing rapidly … in case you are worried about the returns from putting in a bit of work on this. Partly because of the FERPA issues, the current data solutions in education are poor. There are either massive, unwieldily databases like Student Information Systems or folks at the department/school/classroom level trying to build excel sheets to manage all the data. A solution between those 2 (your product) would be really useful for a large number of applications.

5 Comments
JaEun_Claire_Sa
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

I am a teacher who sees the potential of AirTable. This matter is the first thing that came to my mind. Great point. I hope AirTable will take this into account.

brownsps
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

WCAG accessibility is also important, especially for education/government contexts. Many orgs strive for a standard of at least WCAG 2.0 AA, making it difficult to adopt Airtable in its current form. See the ‘Accessibility improvements - Form’ post in this forum for further detail.

serCebolla
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

Any update on this? I recommend to many to use Airtable at my work at a University and have to always give the caveat not to use it for student data, only other data needs for their jobs because of FERPA.

Sage_Kochavi
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

My job uses a patchy, inefficient system to track student applications and employer data. It makes me want to weep because I know Airtable is PERFECT for our needs. But it isn’t FERPA compliant. I wish AirTable would consider getting this certification. And I hope that other school administrators will continue to reply to this post so we can show Airtable that there are many who would love it if AirTable was FERPA compliant.

Geoff_Bernstein
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

I would also like to see FERPA compliance