The U.S. departments of Labor and Education have just issued joint guidance on meeting the performance reporting and evaluation requirements (sections 116 and 122) of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA).  The Joint Guidance on Data Matching to Facilitate WIOA Performance Reporting and Evaluation, according to these agencies, “provides states with information about applicable requirements for, and procedures and options for, matching confidential unemployment compensation information from wage records with personal information from vocational rehabilitation records, and personally identifiable information from education records, and for protecting the confidentiality of information contained in such records.”

I haven’t done anything more than skim the document, but in doing so I spotted some interesting clarification concerning situations in which FERPA may not apply for some adult education programming funded through WIOA, and I’m not really sure what to make of it. I’ve never seen exceptions carved out before, but I may just not have been aware of them. If anyone has any insights on this, I’d love to hear from you.