Homeschool requirements · Arkansas
Homeschooling in Arkansas
Light paperwork · A notice or an enrollment form, then keep your own records.
Submit a notice of intent to the local superintendent each year (by August 15, or 14 days before withdrawing a child mid-year).
What Arkansas asks
| Notice | Annual notice of intent to the local public school superintendent. |
|---|---|
| Days and hours | Arkansas sets no number. HomeSchool Scribe plans against 180 days unless you change it. |
| Subjects | Not specified |
| Assessment | None required (annual testing was repealed). |
| Records to keep | No statutory record requirement; keep your own attendance and samples. |
| Parent qualification | None. |
| Worth knowing | 180 days is a planning default only. |
Deadlines
These are the dates the app tracks for Arkansas. Districts vary; the app lets you edit any of them.
| What | When | To whom | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Notice of intent to home school Notice · File online | By August 15 each year | Superintendent of your resident school district | One notice covers the whole family, and it goes in every school year by August 15. The form for the coming year opens June 1; anything submitted before June 1 is processed for the year that just ended, so filing in the spring does not cover the fall. If your school year starts after August 15, as many Arkansas calendars do, this deadline lands before your first day. DESE marks its online system as the preferred method; the state's rule also allows a written notice by email, mail, fax or in person, and paper forms go to the resident school district rather than to the state department. The 2026-2027 form asks for the school district, county and start date, the parent or guardian's name, address, phone and optional email, and for each child the legal name, date of birth, gender, grade level for the coming year, and the type, name and address of the last school attended if there was one. Three checkboxes are optional: enrolling in a GED program, taking part in interscholastic activities, and ATLAS testing for families in the Education Freedom Account program, which also asks for the child's Social Security number. Signing the form is the parent's agreement to be responsible for the child's education. Notarizing is not needed for the district, only if a notarized copy is wanted for something else. A notice filed at the start of the year covers the whole year; one filed mid-year covers the rest of it. For a child still enrolled in a public school, a notice filed after August 15 brings a five school-day waiting period before the district releases the child; the superintendent or the district board can waive it on request, and the online form carries that waiver checkbox on its third page. A public school student who is under disciplinary action is not eligible to enroll in a home school until the action is finished, the semester ends, or the student is expelled. A child who enrolls in a public, private or parochial school partway through the year cannot return to home schooling until a new notice of intent is filed, which the annual August reminder does not cover. A family that moves to a different Arkansas district during the year files a copy of the current-year notice with the new superintendent's office within 30 calendar days of establishing residency, and DESE's home school office asks to be told by email as well. HomeSchool Scribe prepares the notice letter and opens the state's portal; the filing happens on the state's site. |
| Nothing else to file: keep your own records Records · Keep in your files | By the end of the school year | Keep in your files | After the notice, Arkansas asks for nothing else: standardized testing was repealed for families outside the Education Freedom Account program, no day or hour count is set, no subjects are listed, and no one reviews a homeschool family's records. They still matter in one place the state does spell out. A student enrolling or re-enrolling in an Arkansas public school hands the school a transcript of every course taken with semester grades, plus a portfolio showing the curricula used, tests taken and lessons completed; grade placement also looks at a nationally normed test score from the past year at the thirtieth percentile or above, and the school assesses or waives it if there is no score. Two other things sit outside the notice and are run by other offices. A family taking Education Freedom Account money has annual testing attached to it: for grades K-10, a nationally normed test in reading and math from the state's approved list, taken in a spring window and submitted to the Department when it asks by email in late spring. For the 2025-2026 year that window was March 1 to June 30 with results due June 30; the 2026-2027 dates were not posted when this was written, so the EFA office at 501-683-1876 or ade.efa@ade.arkansas.gov has the current ones. And a homeschooled student trying out for a public school interscholastic activity tells the principal in writing before the signup or tryout deadline and shows a score at or above the thirtieth percentile on the Stanford Achievement Test Series, Tenth Edition, or another nationally normed test from the previous 12 months. Nothing on this row has a deadline. |
What HomeSchool Scribe does in Arkansas
- Notice of intent to home school: Prepares the notice letter; reminds you 14 days and 2 days before; opens the portal and keeps your confirmation.
- Nothing else to file: keep your own records: Prepares the attendance and hours report, the portfolio, the course of study and the transcript; keeps it in records.
Attendance and hours fill in from the lessons you check off, so the documents above come from records you already have.
Read the law yourself
Arkansas Division of Elementary and Secondary Education · HSLDA’s Arkansas summary · Notice of intent to home school portal
Not legal advicePlanning summaries in plain language, reviewed 2026-09-29. Deadlines and recipients vary by district; confirm with Arkansas’s current law or a homeschool legal organization before you file anything. If something here is out of date, tell us and we’ll fix it for every family in Arkansas.