Cite as: 534 U. S. 426 (2002)
Opinion of the Court
not contest the § 1983 issue before the Court of Appeals. That court raised the issue sua sponte, and petitioners did not seek certiorari on the question. We need not resolve the question here as it is our practice "to decide cases on the grounds raised and considered in the Court of Appeals and included in the question on which we granted certiorari." Bragdon v. Abbott, 524 U. S. 624, 638 (1998). In these circumstances we assume, but without so deciding or expressing an opinion on the question, that private parties may sue an educational agency under § 1983 to enforce the provisions of FERPA here at issue. Though we leave open the § 1983 question, the Court has subject-matter jurisdiction because respondent's federal claim is not so "completely devoid of merit as not to involve a federal controversy." Steel Co. v. Citizens for Better Environment, 523 U. S. 83, 89 (1998) (citation omitted). With these preliminary observations concluded, we turn to the merits.
The parties appear to agree that if an assignment becomes an education record the moment a peer grades it, then the grading, or at least the practice of asking students to call out their grades in class, would be an impermissible release of the records under § 1232g(b)(1). Tr. of Oral Arg. 21. Without deciding the point, we assume for the purposes of our analysis that they are correct. The parties disagree, however, whether peer-graded assignments constitute education records at all. The papers do contain information directly related to a student, but they are records under the Act only when and if they "are maintained by an educational agency or institution or by a person acting for such agency or institution." § 1232g(a)(4)(A).
Petitioners, supported by the United States as amicus curiae, contend the definition covers only institutional records—namely, those materials retained in a permanent file as a matter of course. They argue that records "maintained by an educational agency or institution" generally would include final course grades, student grade point averages,
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