Homeschool requirements · Massachusetts
Homeschooling in Massachusetts
Paperwork state · Several filings a year with real deadlines.
Obtain approval from the local school committee or superintendent by submitting an education plan; districts commonly ask for progress reports or testing.
What Massachusetts asks
| Notice | Annual education plan submitted for prior approval by the local district. |
|---|---|
| Days and hours | 180 days, 900 hours a year |
| Subjects | Reading, Writing, English, Geography, Arithmetic, Drawing, Music, History & Constitution, Health, Physical Education, Good Behavior |
| Assessment | Districts may require periodic progress reports, standardized tests, or a portfolio review. |
| Records to keep | Keep the approved plan, attendance, and samples. |
| Parent qualification | None (district reviews competency). |
| Worth knowing | 900 hours (elementary) / 990 hours (secondary) are common district benchmarks. |
Deadlines
These are the dates the app tracks for Massachusetts. Districts vary; the app lets you edit any of them.
| What | When | To whom | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Education plan for district approval Notice · Mail it | Within -45 days of starting | Superintendent or school committee of the district where the child lives | Your district sets this date, not the state. HomeSchool Scribe has deliberately left the reminder off, because any date it picked would be invented. Confirm the date with your district or in your approved plan, then add your own reminder. Massachusetts approves in advance. The state's own page says notification alone does not authorize a parent to begin home schooling, and that removing a child of compulsory school age (6 to 16) without an approved plan would leave the child truant. It is two steps, not one: notify the district in writing first, then the district sends its policy and asks for the plan. Districts look at content, instructional materials, duration and frequency of instruction, methods, evaluation, and whether the child makes adequate progress. There is no statewide date and no statewide form; every school committee writes its own policy, and charter schools, Commonwealth Virtual Schools, school choice districts and vocational technical programs do not approve plans. The date here is a planning default six weeks ahead of the family's school year so the district has room to review and answer; it is this app's spacing, not a Massachusetts deadline. Replace it with the date your district's policy names. Most districts want a new plan each year. A first plan, or a mid-year start, needs its own reminder, because this yearly one does not cover it. The subjects a district compares against are the public school list in chapter 71, section 1: orthography (spelling), reading, writing, English language and grammar, geography, arithmetic, drawing, music, US history and the Constitution, duties of citizenship, health education, physical education and good behavior. A district may consider the length of your school year and the hours of instruction in each subject, but the 180-day and 900/990-hour figures are public school standards, not homeschool ones. DESE's page says the requirements that apply to public schools, such as educator licensing or structured learning time, do not apply to home schooling. |
| District approval in hand before the first day Records · Keep in your files | When you start the school year | Keep with your records | Nothing goes out here. This is the check that the district's written yes arrived before instruction starts, which is the part Massachusetts families most often get caught by. Care and Protection of Charles, 399 Mass. 324 (1987), puts it plainly: approval has to be obtained in advance, before the child is removed from public school and before the home schooling program begins. The state asks districts to answer, preferably in writing, within a reasonable period after they receive the plan, but sets no deadline on that answer, so a plan sent late can still be unanswered in September. A district can approve, ask for changes, ask for more, or turn the plan down. Under Charles a district that turns a plan down has to detail its reasons and give the parent a chance to revise it, and a parent may explain the plan and bring witnesses at a school committee meeting. If nothing has come back, the district is the place to ask. Save the letter or email: it is the one document showing the year was approved. |
| Progress report or evaluation to the district Assessment · Mail it | By the end of the school year | Superintendent or school committee of the district where the child lives | Your district sets this date, not the state. HomeSchool Scribe has deliberately left the reminder off, because any date it picked would be invented. Confirm the date with your district or in your approved plan, then add your own reminder. Whether anything is due here depends on the district, and some ask for nothing at all. Care and Protection of Charles, 399 Mass. 324 (1987), says a superintendent or school committee may require periodic standardized testing, and that other means of evaluating progress, such as periodic progress reports or dated work samples, may be substituted for formal testing subject to the parents' approval. So the alternatives to a test are the part that needs the parent's agreement. AHEM's surveys report that most Massachusetts families end up on a progress report rather than a test. Frequency is the district's to set. The date here is the end of the family's school year; districts that ask twice usually want one around mid-year too, so add a second reminder by hand if yours does. HomeSchool Scribe assembles the report card, the portfolio and the attendance summary and opens the district's own contact details; sending them is the parent's step. |
| Keep the approved plan and the year's records Records · Keep in your files | By the end of the school year | Keep in your own files | Massachusetts names no retention period, so three years is this app's default. HSLDA's Massachusetts article says there is no explicit legal requirement that homeschool records be kept, but an evaluation can call for work samples. Worth holding for each year: the plan as submitted, the district's approval, attendance, dated work samples, any test results, and a copy of whatever progress report went to the district. In an approval state last year's approved plan is also the best starting point for next year's, and the samples behind it are what an evaluation question gets answered with. |
What HomeSchool Scribe does in Massachusetts
- Education plan for district approval: Prepares the notice letter and the course of study; lets you mark it filed with the date.
- District approval in hand before the first day: Prepares the notice letter; reminds you 14 days and 2 days before; keeps it in records.
- Progress report or evaluation to the district: Prepares the report card, the portfolio and the attendance and hours report; lets you mark it filed with the date.
- Keep the approved plan and the year's records: Prepares the notice letter, the attendance and hours report and the portfolio; 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
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education · HSLDA’s Massachusetts summary
Not legal advicePlanning summaries in plain language, reviewed 2026-09-29. Deadlines and recipients vary by district; confirm with Massachusetts’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 Massachusetts.