Homeschool compliance is the one part of this journey you cannot improvise. Every state in the country has the legal authority to regulate how children are educated, and every state has used that authority differently. The rules are knowable — they are written down, usually on the website of your state Department of Education — but they are rarely written in plain English, and almost never in one place. A new homeschool parent can spend an entire weekend trying to figure out whether their state requires a notice of intent, whether it has to be notarized, and what date it has to be filed by. That is time that could have been spent teaching.
The dashboard on this page solves that problem. Pick your state from the dropdown below and you will see every requirement that matters — not just the four basic stats, but the full legal framework, every pathway your state allows, current ESA programs and recent law changes, diploma recognition rules, the official Department of Education link, and the homeschool organizations operating in your state. All on one page. All free.
Why compliance matters more than parents expect
Most homeschool families never have a problem with their state. The vast majority of Department of Education employees are not trying to catch homeschoolers doing something wrong — they have truancy officers, public school enrollments, and testing schedules to manage, and a compliant homeschool family is the easiest kind of file on their desk. But the handful of cases that go badly almost always start with a paperwork mistake that could have been avoided. A notice of intent filed three weeks after the state's deadline. An attendance log reconstructed from memory because nobody wrote anything down. A required subject like state history that the parent didn't know was required until the annual review.
The simplest way to stay out of trouble is to treat the paperwork seriously for the first two weeks of the school year and then forget about it. File the notice. Mark the calendar every day you school. Confirm once that your curriculum hits your state's required subjects. That's it. The rest of the year can be focused on your children.
The three types of states
Once you strip away the forms and the jargon, every state in the country falls into one of three broad categories.
Low-regulation states ask for very little. Texas, Alaska (under the private school option), Idaho, and Oklahoma do not require a notice of intent at all. There is no annual filing, no standardized test, and in some cases no required subjects beyond the ones you would obviously teach anyway.
Moderate-regulation states — where the majority of American homeschool families actually live — require a notice of intent at the start of the year, expect you to teach a defined list of subjects, and ask you to meet a minimum number of instructional days or hours. States like Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia fall into this group.
High-regulation states want more. New York and Pennsylvania are the two names that come up most often. Both require detailed annual paperwork, quarterly reports, and portfolio reviews at specific grade levels. Tens of thousands of families do it every year without incident — but if you live in one of these states, getting organized early matters more.
The single most common compliance mistake is not filing a notice of intent at all, because the parent assumed their state didn't require one. Pick your state below and find out for sure.
How to use the tools on this page
Three tools below. All three save your data to your own device — nothing is sent to a server, nothing is shared with us. If you use a different browser or clear your browser data, your saved information will reset, so treat these tools as convenience helpers and keep a separate backup of anything you need to retain long-term.
Start by selecting your state. Read your full requirements. Then set your instructional day goal in the second card — usually 180, but check what your state actually requires. As the year goes on, the tracker updates automatically based on the days you mark in the third card, the tap-attendance calendar.
Privacy note: Every tap, every number, every state you select is saved to your browser's local storage on your device. We do not receive this data. We cannot see what state you are in, what days you marked, or what your goal is. This is the whole design.
Select Your State
Pick your state to see the full breakdown — quick stats, legal framework, pathways, deadlines, ESA programs, diploma rules, official DOE link, and recognized homeschool organizations.
School Year Goal Tracker
Enter your target number of days for the year, and watch the progress as you check days off on the calendar below.
Attendance Tap Calendar
Tap each day you teach to mark it complete. Tap again to remove. Saves automatically to your device.
Opens a printer-friendly version of your current month's attendance for your records.
Keeping records that protect you
If your state never audits a single homeschool family, why keep records at all? Because the states that do ask for documentation tend to ask for it without much warning, and because your future self — the one building a transcript four years from now — will thank you for the notes you took today. Good records are not about paranoia. They are about being able to answer any question anyone ever asks you about your child's education with confidence.
The records worth keeping are simpler than most parents expect. An attendance log — even a wall calendar with checkmarks — covers the first question most states ask. A short list of the curriculum you used, by subject and grade, covers the second. Work samples from each child, a few pieces per year, cover the third. Tests and evaluations, if your state requires them, go in a folder with the official results. That is the entire filing system most homeschool families ever need.
What to do when you move
Interstate moves are where homeschool compliance gets genuinely tricky. Your old state's filing does not carry over. Your new state's filing deadline may have already passed by the time you arrive. Some states require notification within a specific window of moving in — Nevada, for example, gives you ten days.
The clean way to handle a move is to file a closure notice with your old state on the day you leave, and file a notice of intent with your new state on the day you arrive or as soon as the law requires, whichever comes first. Keep copies of both. If there is any gap between the two, document what school looked like during the move — packing weeks are not blank weeks in a homeschool family's year.
One last honest word about all of this
Most homeschool parents will never need to produce a single piece of paperwork to a state official in their entire homeschooling career. You might file a notice of intent once a year and then never hear from anyone. That is the normal experience. The reason to do the paperwork anyway is not because the state is watching. It is because your children's education matters, and a family that takes itself seriously keeps the records to prove it. The calendar above is a small act of that seriousness, repeated every school day, until the year is done.