State requirements
Every legal fact we state about a state’s homeschool requirements comes out of one reviewed file. The notice rule, the subject list, the instruction-time rule and the rest are not typed state by state: they are rendered by code from fields filled in from that state’s own sources. The step-by-step walkthrough beside them is written prose, checked against those same reviewed facts. Here is how that is done, and where it stops.
Each state’s row is checked against an official source for that state — usually its education agency’s own homeschooling page — and, where our review has one, against the statute. A second source is recorded beside it; for 48 of the 51 states that is HSLDA’s summary, labelled as HSLDA’s reading and not the state’s. Every source link says whose page it is — the host for an official source, HSLDA by name for those summaries — so you can see where it goes before you click. Each state page links an official source, and names the statute where our review has one, so you can check us against the source.
Every state page answers the same questions: whether you must send notice and to whom, which subjects the state names, any instruction-time rule, whether a test or another evaluation is required, what records to keep, whether a parent needs a qualification, the ages at which school attendance is required, and the legal ways to homeschool there. The state page, the comparison table and that state’s funding page all read the same row through the same code, so they cannot tell you three different things.
In 12 states the law offers more than one legal route, and what is required can differ sharply between them — a test that binds one pathway may not touch another. The badges at the top of a state page describe the common route; the page names the others underneath. Where a badge and the detail below it seem to disagree, the detail is the fuller answer.
That label is our own editorial summary of how much a state asks across those areas. It is not a legal category, no state uses it, and there is no formula behind it — we read the whole row and make a judgement. Today we place 21 of the 51 at minimal regulation, 25 at moderate regulation and 5 at high regulation. If you disagree, every fact behind the label is on the page.
Each row carries a confidence mark, and where it is anything less than high that state’s page says so and tells you to read the official source before relying on it. Three states are marked that way today: Connecticut, Louisiana, and New Hampshire — because the law there is changing, or because a field could not be confirmed against a primary source.
“Last reviewed” on a state page is the day that state’s row was last read through end to end against its sources. June 5, 2026 is the date of the last full review, when all 51 were checked together; a state re-read since then carries its own, later date, and its page prints that instead. A correction is a narrower thing: when we fix a fact after re-reading the official source for that fact, the page keeps its review date and adds the date it was corrected. Since that review we have corrected the pages for Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming after re-reading the official source for what changed; each of those pages shows the date of its correction. A date records work already done. It is not a promise about when the next review will happen.
Every state page carries a “Report an inaccuracy” link. It sends what you write to us, and a person reads it. Nothing in the reviewed file changes by itself — no import, no feed and no scheduled process writes to it. (The recent-law-changes list further up a state page is a separate news feed, and each story there carries its own date.) A fact is corrected only after the state’s own statute or agency page has been re-read and the change confirmed against it more than once; where a correction would remove a requirement, we also look for a reason the old rule should stand before we drop it. The page then shows the date it was corrected.
A state’s funding page is built from a separate directory of programs and resources, each carrying its own checked date and status. Those dates print separately from the requirements review date, each labelled for what it covers — one date across two unrelated things certifies neither.
This is a plain-English reading of each state’s law, not legal advice. Laws change between reviews, and a page can be right the day it is written and out of date three months later — read the official source before you file anything. Romeschool helps you keep and organize the records your state asks for, and where it can prepare a notice for you, you read it and you send it — nothing goes to a state or a district without you.