One day, Kristja J. Falvo’s children came home from school and they told their mother of a problem that they had. They had told their mother that they were feeling embarrassed of having other students grade their paper. They didn’t feel comfortable having other students know what their grade was especially if they’d failed.

She has three children Elizabeth, Philip, and Erica. It was mainly her son who was embarrassed of the peer grading because he was a special education student. So then the next day of school, Kristja J. Falvo had went down to her children’s school to complain. She had discussed the problem with the administrator and the superintendent, but they told her that they didn’t see any problem with having other students grading another student’s paper.

She had asked the Owasso Independent School District for them to ban peer grading. She believed that only the teacher should be allowed to grade the papers. She strongly felt that way. Falvo is actually a teacher herself. And if you don’t know what peer grading is, peer grading is basically when another student grades another student’s paper. Whether it’s a test or a simple worksheet she said that it embarrassed her children.

So since the school didn’t do anything, she filed an action against Owasso public schools for privacy reasons about the paper grading. Falvo says that peer grading violates the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA). It violated the Fourteenth Amendment privacy rights. The school should respect the children’s privacy. She gave her opinion, but the court overruled it.

Unfortunately for her, the District Court said that students grading other students papers were fine.

They did not agree with what Falvo had to say. Some people did agree with Falvo, but still students do grade other student’s papers. The opinion of the court was given by Murphy, the Circuit Judge. The Court of Appeals found that grades given to a student from another student are “education records.”

So in the end, Kristja J. Falvo lost her case against the school. The court found nothing bad was going on with peer grading. Peer grading did not at all violate FERPA’s rules.