Homeschool Requirements in California
California asks very little of you. You did not bring your children home for the sake of a form. Here is the form anyway. Begin with the first heading: what you send in, if anything, and the day it is due. There is not much after that. Every claim is cited at the foot, so you can hold it against the code rather than take our word for it.
What you send in, and when it is due
Depends on option. Most common: file the Private School Affidavit (PSA / “R-4” online form) with the CA Dept. of Education annually between October 1 and October 15, establishing the home as a private school (Ed. Code 33190). Enrolling in a Private School Satellite Program (PSP) shifts the PSA duty to the PSP. Public-school/charter independent study requires district enrollment paperwork instead. The private-tutor option (Ed. Code 48224) requires no filing at all. Note: PSA filers with fewer than 6 students are exempt from some directory-publication elements but still file.
Days and hours
No statutory day/hour count for the PSA (home private school) route, the school must simply be a “full-time day school”; length of the school year/day is set by the private school itself. CDE guidance treats a public-school-comparable calendar (roughly 175-180 days) as prudent but it is not a codified homeschool mandate. The private-tutor option does have a hard rule: at least 3 hours/day, between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m., for 175 days per school year (Ed. Code 48224).
Subjects the law names
Instruction must be in English (Ed. Code 30, 48222) and cover “the several branches of study required to be taught in the public schools.” Grades 1-6 (Ed. Code 51210): English, mathematics, social sciences, science, visual and performing arts, health, physical education. Grades 7-12 (Ed. Code 51220): English, social sciences, world language, physical education, science, mathematics, visual and performing arts, applied arts, career technical education. No curriculum approval and no teacher credential required (credential required only for the 48224 private-tutor option).
What you keep
Required for the PSA route: an attendance register recording every absence of a half-day or more (Ed. Code 48222); courses of study offered; names and qualifications of faculty (“persons capable of teaching”); the affidavit information itself. Records must be kept at the school (home) address stated on the affidavit and are subject to inspection by the school-attendance supervisor. Common practice/CDE guidance is to retain for at least 3 years. No records are filed with the state beyond the affidavit.
The log is easy to keep and easy to invent in June, and only one of those survives a reader. Writing down a morning hour while it is still happening.
Those are the pages beneath the transcript rather than the transcript itself. The Records Pack has the attendance and hours log and the portfolio index, editable, in both editions.
Testing and evaluation
None. California requires no standardized testing, no portfolio review, and no evaluation of homeschooled students under the PSA or private-tutor options. (Public charter/district independent study students do take state assessments as enrolled public-school students.)
The diploma and the transcript
A home-based private school is a private school: the parent/administrator issues its own transcript and diploma, and California does not accredit, approve, or validate them. No state-issued homeschool diploma exists. UC/CSU admission generally goes through the alternate/examination path (SAT/ACT, AP, community-college coursework) rather than an approved a-g course list, since a-g approval requires an approved school. The CHSPE (age 16 or completion of 10th grade) is a state-issued certificate legally equivalent to a diploma and is the standard workaround for employment/military/financial-aid purposes; the GED is available at 18 (or 17 with conditions). Keep detailed course descriptions and credit hours in the transcript. New for 2026: the Safe Learning Environments Act (SB 848), effective July 1, 2026, extends child-abuse-prevention policy, training, mandated-reporter and hiring-vetting duties to private schools. Private satellite programs and multi-family co-ops should work out whether it reaches them. Single-family home private schools with only the parents’ own children are widely read as out of scope, but this is new and untested.
One label on that transcript is not yours to write, whatever California allows. What does not belong on a homeschool transcript.
Where this comes from
Statute: Cal. Educ. Code 33190 (private school affidavit); 48222 (private school exemption, attendance register, English); 48224 (private tutor: credential, 3 hrs/day, 175 days); 51210 and 51220 (required subjects); 51745 et seq. (independent study); 48412 (CHSPE)
Source: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=EDC§ionNum=48222.
Last reviewed: July 2026. The day is not recorded.
Homeschool law changes, and a page like this goes quietly out of date. Before a filing deadline, read the code above yourself. If we have fallen behind we would much rather hear it from you than have you find out at a district office.
All fifty states and the District of Columbia, each one citing the law it came from.
Filing is one part of it. Keeping the record is the other, and that is what our Records System is for: the editable transcript with the GPA already working, 131 academic course descriptions, the Bible and theology descriptions, and this same cited summary for every state and DC. Protestant and Catholic editions. Thirty-nine dollars, one household, however many children you teach.