DO HONOR ROLLS VIOLATE STUDENT PRIVACY RIGHTS?

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review how far school districts should go in allowing what might seem like useful and harmless practices but in reality likely violate the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act.

Under that act, schools have learned to be extremely cautious about making public any information that reveals how a student is performing or what grades the student is making.

The case at hand involves an Oklahoma school district that is being sued by the mother of three students who contends her children were embarrassed when classmates graded each other's papers and told the teacher the grades.

In-class grading has been a common practice for decades. Teachers who do a lot of testing -- pop quizzes or daily tests -- may often rely on students to grade each other's papers.

Many former college students will remember when exam scores were posted on bulletin boards in hallways for all to see, complete with the names and grades of students. Nowadays, schools are more circumspect: They still post grades, but students are identified by numbers.

Taken to its extreme, the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act either already has or soon could, depending on how the Supreme Court rules in this case, put a stop to such community-accepted practices as the publication of honor rolls in local newspapers. Also affected could be the public display of student artwork or science projects that have been graded. The same goes for publicizing students of the month or perfect-attendance records, because both are covered by the federal act.

The need for confidentiality in student records has been tested in other ways as well.

Until recently, records indicating juvenile offenses couldn't be shared from one school district to the next. This meant officials in one district attended by a problem student couldn't pass along vital information to the new district when the student moved. Missouri now has a law allowing the exchange of such information.

Privacy is a serious matter, and the federal act was intended to protect a student's right to confidentiality. But, as with too many laws, the act may have gone too far. Take the grades of college students, which are kept from tuition-paying parents unless the student consents to have them shared with Mom and Dad.

Further, such laws further erode the wisdom, community standards and decision-making authority of local school boards to decide how to best handle these issues. Whether or not the Supreme Court prohibits in-class grading by students, it is too bad this decision is being made in Washington rather than by a local school board.