THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS — Congress passed the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, known as FERPA, in 1974 in large part due to concerns about inaccurate and misleading data collected in schools that could negatively affect students. New research from Najarian Peters, associate professor of law at the University of Kansas, argues that FERPA should be enhanced to add more protections to prevent the inclusion of that type of information, known as dirty data, in the education record. While FERPA was intended to protect students and their families from misleading or damaging information in the education record, the law lacks protections against inaccurate data inclusion at the point of collection. In an article published in the Washington and Lee Law Review,Peters outlined how the law could be enhanced. Peters coined the term “digital golemization” for the phenomenon of inaccurate, incomplete or misleading data being placed in the digital record, which then goes on to potentially shape and influence a student’s reputation and resulting structure of opportunities.