Getting started homeschooling in District of Columbia

CurriculumQuiz checked the linked government or statute page on 2026-10-17. The six notes are notice, subjects, days or hours, assessment, teacher qualifications, and records. A curriculum website can help you choose books. It is not the statute. When this page and a blog disagree, the linked official page wins. If that page is silent, the answer here stays unknown.

Rules change. A summary can be wrong, incomplete, or out of date. Confirm the linked page, and contact that agency or a qualified attorney about your own facts. Save a copy of the page or the form it names, with the date you read it.

1. Open the official source

The recorded source for District of Columbia is DC Office of the State Superintendent of Education. DC Office of the State Superintendent of Education. Read it yourself before you buy a curriculum or file a form.

2. Notice or registration

Parents or legal guardians must complete a Notification of Intent to Homeschool at least 15 business days before the first date of home instruction. To continue, they must complete a Notification of Homeschool Continuation by August 15.

If that note does not name a form, a deadline, or an office, the source we read did not give us one. Check official source before you mail or upload anything.

3. Subjects

Programs must provide thorough and regular instruction of sufficient duration and, at a minimum, include language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, art, music, health, and physical education.

A curriculum that lists those words is not, by itself, proof that a legal duty is met. Match your plan to the sentence above. Ask the agency when the sentence says the list was not stated.

4. Days and hours

The page requires instruction of sufficient duration. It does not state a number of days or hours.

Do not borrow a day count from another state. If this note does not state a number, we do not invent one.

5. Assessment

The portfolio must include evidence of the student's current work, and the page's examples include assessments. A separate required test was not stated on this page.

A test that comes with a curriculum is not the same thing as a test an agency requires. Use the sentence above.

6. Teacher qualifications

To administer a homeschooling program, a parent or legal guardian must have a high school diploma or its equivalent, or petition OSSE for a waiver with evidence they can provide a thorough and regular education. They may not provide home instruction to another parent's students.

A college degree, a teaching certificate, and a high-school diploma are different things. Record only what this sentence names. If it names nothing, check official source.

7. Records

Parents must maintain a portfolio of education materials, including evidence of current work such as writing, mathematics, and assessments, for at least one year, and make it available to OSSE on request.

Online schools in this directory often keep a grade file. Print curricula usually leave the file with the parent. That describes the product. It is not a ruling that either one satisfies District of Columbia. Keep what the sentence names.

Withdrawing from public school

The text recorded from the official source does not describe withdrawing from public school. This page does not add a withdrawal rule. Ask the school the child attends, and check official source.

If you are leaving a public school, ask that school what it needs in order to drop the student from its roll. A district can have a local form that the state page does not quote. This page will not supply one.

After the official page, then a curriculum

The quiz ranks programs from grade, style, time, budget, faith, accreditation, and pace. It does not read the District of Columbia statute, and the state does not change the match percentage. It adds a link back to the state page. The quiz runs in the browser. Quiz answers are never stored or sent. The site uses Google Analytics, which sets cookies, for anonymous usage stats. It does not ask for a child's name.

Style guides on this site list programs by tags and grade spans that are already in the directory. They are not legal checklists: Charlotte Mason, classical, secular, free, and kindergarten.

Come back to the official URL when the school year turns over. If the agency page changed, write to hello-curriculumquiz@agentmail.to and we will re-check the source before we change this summary. You can also embed the short fact box from the state page.