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- Make Homeschool Safe for All Children
Last updated March 2026
In these 12 states, homeschooling is not regulated at all. Home educators are not required to notify their school district or state department of education that they are homeschooled. There are no enforceable provisions to ensure kids are learning and safe. This can lead to vulnerable kids falling off the map entirely.
In these 17 states, home educators are required to notify their school district or state department of education that they are homeschooling, but there are few, if any, enforceable provisions beyond notification. In practice, these states don’t require anything further beyond filling out the notification form.
In these 19 states, there are some provisions in place to ensure homeschooled kids are assessed for progress, but these are not consistently enforced.
In these 2 states, provisions are in place with the intent to protect against educational neglect. These may include requiring every homeschooled child to be assessed for progress at a regular interval. However, each of these states currently lacks key child safety safeguards, leaving vulnerable children at risk.
The number of homeschool options in a state tells us whether less-regulated options exist which weaken oversight.
States define homeschooling using several different legal designations. Some states have a homeschooling statute, while others treat homeschools as a variation of private schools, or have an alternative instruction clause to exempt children from compulsory school attendance.
Many states have multiple legal pathways for homeschooling, often with differing levels of oversight. This means that, while a state’s homeschool statute might have strong safeguards on paper for one homeschooling pathway, those safeguards might not apply consistently to all options across the board.
Notification requirements determine whether and how often home educators need to notify the state that they are homeschooling.
Most states require some form of notification, either one-time or annually. In the 12 states that don’t require notice at all, any child who stops attending school is technically homeschooled. This threatens compulsory education requirements and makes it possible for vulnerable children to essentially disappear. If a state does not require notification, the state then also does not have any mechanism of obtaining data on their homeschooling populations.
In most states, a caregiver does not have to provide a copy of a student’s birth certificate or vaccine records with notice of their intent to homeschool.
Only 8 states require every home educator to have received, at minimum, a high school diploma or equivalent to teach, even if they are teaching high school level courses. Only Washington requires education beyond high school.
Only 31 states require home educators to teach core subjects, like English and math, and even fewer require that homeschooled students be taught a comprehensive list of subjects.
To be clear, no state regulates how a caregiver teaches a subject — just whether it is taught at all.
29 states do not require that homeschooled students be assessed for educational progress at any point during their schooling. 18 states require assessment for some homeschool options, but either do not require that home educators submit assessments anywhere, have options that don’t require assessment, or offer exemptions from assessment based on religious or moral views. Only 3 states require that every homeschooled child be assessed at some point in their schooling.
In the homeschooling context, assessments refer both to standardized tests and more holistic forms of assessment like portfolio review.
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