7.6 Student Records and the Illinois School Student Records Act

Two Record Categories and Two Retention Clocks

Objective 0012 asks candidates to demonstrate knowledge of "types of student records (e.g., medical, academic, progress-monitoring data) and their appropriate use and maintenance in accordance with local and state regulations (e.g., storage, transfer, destruction)." In Illinois that means the Illinois School Student Records Act (ISSRA), 105 ILCS 10, and its implementing rules at 23 Ill. Adm. Code 375, layered on top of FERPA.

What Counts as a School Student Record

ISSRA defines a school student record as any writing or other recorded information concerning a student, by which the student may be individually identified, maintained by a school or at its direction or by a school employee — regardless of how or where it is stored. That last clause covers a spreadsheet on a personal laptop, a data sheet in a binder, and a photograph on a phone.

One exclusion matters in practice: writings kept by an employee for his or her exclusive use, not shared with anyone else, and destroyed no later than the student's graduation or permanent withdrawal, are not student records. A teacher's private planning notes qualify. The moment those notes are shown to a colleague, emailed, or placed in a shared file, they become a student record subject to parent access.

Permanent Record (minimum 60 years)

The permanent record is deliberately short:

• Student name, birth date and place, gender, and address
• Parents' or guardians' names and addresses
• Academic transcript: grades, class rank, graduation date, grade level achieved, and scores on college entrance examinations
• Attendance record
• Accident reports and health record
• A record of each release of permanent record information
• Optionally: honors and awards, and school-sponsored activities and athletics

Retention: not less than 60 years after the student transfers, graduates, or permanently withdraws.

Temporary Record (minimum 5 years)

Everything else that is a student record goes here, including nearly all of what a special educator produces:

• All special education records: evaluations and reports, eligibility determinations, IEPs, IFSPs, behavior intervention plans, progress-monitoring data, prior written notices, and consent forms
• Intelligence, aptitude, psychological, and personality test results
• Family background information
• Teacher anecdotal records and evaluations
• Disciplinary information, including actions involving drugs, weapons, or bodily harm to others
• Health-related information not in the permanent record, and biometric information
• Verified reports or information from non-educational persons, agencies, or organizations

Retention: not less than 5 years after the student transfers, graduates, or otherwise withdraws.

Who Holds the Rights

Parents hold the rights until the student becomes an eligible student, which under Illinois law occurs when the student turns 18, marries, enters the military, or graduates from high school. A student under 18 has the right to inspect and copy their permanent record; an eligible student may inspect and copy both. Note that this Illinois threshold operates alongside the IDEA transfer of educational decision-making rights at 18, and both should be planned for in advance rather than discovered mid-year.

Access, Amendment, Transfer, and Destruction

Inspection and Copying

A parent or eligible student may inspect and copy the student's records. Illinois sets a hard deadline: the school must comply within 10 business days of the request, and may extend by 5 business days for good cause with notice. Two practical rules follow:

• The school may charge a reasonable copying fee, but it may not deny copies because the family cannot afford to pay.
• Under IDEA, access must also be provided without unnecessary delay and before any IEP meeting or due process hearing — which in practice means a parent who asks for records three days before an IEP meeting cannot be told to wait ten business days.

FERPA sets an outer limit of 45 calendar days for education records generally; Illinois and IDEA both impose shorter deadlines, and the shortest applicable deadline governs.

Amendment and Challenge

A parent or eligible student who believes information is inaccurate, misleading, or in violation of privacy rights may request an amendment. If the school declines, the family is entitled to a hearing, and if the school still declines after the hearing, the family may place a written statement of disagreement in the record, which must then accompany the disputed information for as long as it is maintained. Grades and other academic judgments are generally not subject to challenge on the merits, but factual errors and unsupported characterizations are.

Transfer Between Districts

When a student transfers, the sending district forwards the records to the new school. Two points to remember:

• Disciplinary records involving drugs, weapons, or bodily harm to others transfer with the temporary record.
• Special education records must move quickly, because the receiving district has to provide comparable services immediately for a student who transfers with an IEP. A receiving district must take reasonable steps to obtain the records promptly, and the sending district must respond promptly.

Destruction

Destruction is a regulated act, not housekeeping.

• The school must notify the parent or eligible student before destroying temporary records and give an opportunity to copy them.
• Under IDEA, the district must inform parents when personally identifiable information collected, maintained, or used for special education is no longer needed, and must destroy it at the parent's request — with the exception that a permanent record of the student's name, address, phone number, grades, attendance, classes attended, grade level completed, and year completed may be retained without time limitation.
• Advise families to keep copies. Special education evaluations often establish eligibility for adult services, vocational rehabilitation, postsecondary accommodations, and Social Security, and a college disability resource center may ask for documentation years after the temporary record was lawfully destroyed. Providing the family with a complete copy at exit is a genuine transition service.

The Special Educator's Daily Record Practice

• Record data, not conclusions, and date and source every entry. "11/4/2026: 3 refusals during independent math, each following a two-page worksheet" beats "had a bad week."
• Separate observation from inference in writing. Inference belongs in a clearly labeled interpretation section.
• Assume every record will be read by the parent, an attorney, and a hearing officer, because any of them may. That standard improves writing quality and removes speculation.
• Log service delivery contemporaneously. A missing minutes log is indistinguishable from a missing service.
• Secure everything: locked storage for paper, district systems rather than personal devices or personal cloud accounts for electronic records, no student names in unencrypted email, and screens locked when unattended.
• Maintain the release log on the permanent record, and record every disclosure made without consent under an exception, including health and safety emergencies.
• Train paraprofessionals who collect data on both the recording procedure and the confidentiality obligation, because a data sheet on a clipboard is a student record.