Homeschool Requirements in Hawaii

Hawaii asks for a few particular things. A short list of real requirements, none of them heavy on its own. The dates undo more families than the paperwork ever does, so put them in the calendar in the same week you begin, alongside everything else a household is carrying. Do that and the rest of this page becomes reading instead of worry.

What you send in, and when it is due

Submit a notice of intent to home educate to the principal of the public school the child is or would be assigned to, before starting. Haw. Admin. R. § 8-12-13(a) allows DOE Form 4140 or a letter containing the child’s name, address and telephone number, the child’s birthdate and grade level, and the parent’s signature. No approval is needed; § 8-12-13(b) says the notice “is for record keeping purposes and to protect families from unfounded accusations of educational neglect or truancy”, and the principal and district superintendent acknowledge it. The notice is one-time, not annual, so long as the annual progress report is filed, except where the child transfers from one local public school to another, for example moving from sixth grade to an intermediate school (§ 8-12-13(c)). Tell the principal if you stop: under § 8-12-16 a child must be re-enrolled in the local public school or a licensed private school unless a new alternative educational program is presented within five school days after home schooling ends.

Days and hours

No minimum number of days or hours is set by rule. The recordkeeping rule says the record of the planned curriculum should include the number of hours of instruction per week, so keeping an hours log is the safe read even though no threshold exists. Haw. Admin. R. § 8-12-15 requires the curriculum to be “structured and based on educational objectives as well as the needs of the child”, to be “cumulative and sequential”, to provide a range of up-to-date knowledge and needed skills, and to take account of the interests, needs and abilities of the child.

Subjects the law names

No mandated subject list. Haw. Admin. R. § 8-12-15 is permissive: an elementary curriculum “may include” language arts, mathematics, social studies, science, art, music, health and physical education at the appropriate developmental stage, and a secondary curriculum “may include” social studies, English, mathematics, science, health, physical education and guidance. Curriculum choice and materials are the parent’s. No parent qualification or teacher certification is required: § 8-12-19 provides that “a parent teaching the parent’s child at home shall be deemed a qualified instructor.”

What you keep

Keep a record of the planned curriculum. Haw. Admin. R. § 8-12-15 says it should include the planned commencement and ending dates of the program, the number of hours of instruction per week, the subject areas to be covered, the method used to determine mastery of materials and subjects in the curriculum, and a list of textbooks or other instructional materials in standard bibliographical format. You keep this record; you do not file it. The only time you have to share it is if the principal finds your child’s annual progress inadequate, in which case § 8-12-18(d) provides that the principal may request it and the parents shall share it. Section 8-12-17 backs you up: reasonable cause for educational neglect “shall not be based on the refusal of parents to comply with any requests which exceed the requirements of this chapter.”

Testing and evaluation

Submit an annual progress report to the principal. Haw. Admin. R. § 8-12-18(b) gives four methods, any one of which will do: (1) a score on a nationally normed standardized achievement test demonstrating grade level achievement appropriate to the child’s age; (2) progress on such a test equivalent to one grade level per calendar year, even if overall achievement falls short of grade level standards; (3) a written evaluation by a person certified to teach in the State of Hawaii that the child demonstrates appropriate grade level achievement or significant annual advancement commensurate with the child’s abilities; or (4) a written evaluation by the parent, which must include a description of progress in each subject area in the curriculum, representative samples of the child’s work, and representative tests and assignments including grades for courses if grades are given. Test scores are required for grades 3, 5, 8 and 10. The tests used “shall be comparable to the appropriate criterion or norm-referenced tests used by the department in the grades concerned”, the child is eligible to take the Statewide Testing Program test at the local public school, the parent may instead arrange private testing at the parent’s own expense, and the parent may request and the principal may approve other means of evaluation to meet the requirement. In those four grades the parent may let the school testing results serve as that year’s progress report (§ 8-12-18(c)). Two protections in § 8-12-18(d) are worth knowing. Where standardized scores are used, adequate progress means scores or stanines in the upper two thirds. And unless progress is inadequate for two consecutive semesters, recommendations to enroll the child in a public or private school or to take legal action for educational neglect are prohibited, with no such recommendation permitted at all for a child before third grade.

An assessment is read against what you wrote down while it was happening, which is the part a morning hour tends to lose. Putting morning time and the church year on a record without inflating it.

The diploma and the transcript

The most misunderstood part of Hawaii law, and the rule is blunter than most summaries suggest. Haw. Admin. R. § 8-12-20 reads in full: “No course credits (Carnegie units) are granted for time spent being home-schooled.” That is not a matter of a principal’s discretion. Section 8-12-21 then gives two diploma routes. Under (a), a home-schooled child who wants a diploma from the local public high school “shall attend high school for a minimum of three full years and meet the credit requirements for graduation”, so a late transfer starts from zero credits. Under (b), a home-schooled child may earn a diploma from the community school for adults by being at least sixteen (except for emancipated minors), having been home-schooled for at least one semester under Hawaii’s procedures, and achieving a satisfactory score on the high school equivalency test. That second route does not require three years of attendance. The rule text has not been revised since 2000, so it still names the GED and still refers to the Hawaii State Test of Essential Competencies, a test that no longer exists; Hawaii now administers the HiSET. Most families rely on a parent-issued diploma and transcript, which is lawful and widely accepted but not state-validated, or on dual enrollment at a University of Hawaii community college for accredited credit. If a Department diploma matters, plan the transfer at least three full years out or use the adult school route. Two provisions worth knowing. Section 8-12-22 lets a home-schooled child take any college entrance examination made available to other students, and requires the principal of the local public high school, on request, to “supply written acknowledgement that a child has been home schooled in compliance with the requirements of this chapter”; that letter is the closest thing Hawaii offers to state validation. Section 8-12-14 keeps statutorily mandated educational and related services available at the home public school site to home-schooled children who have been evaluated and certified as needing them and who request them. On athletics, do not assume access: § 8-12-13(d) makes the parent “responsible for the child’s total educational program including athletics and other co-curricular activities”, and nothing in the chapter grants a right to public school teams, so ask the individual school.

Deciding what counted as a course, before any of it reaches a transcript, is its own piece of work. Awarding credit for theology, apologetics and church history.

A required course becomes something a reader can weigh once there is a paragraph under it. The Course Description Library is 131 of them in one Word file you edit.

Where this comes from

Statute: Haw. Rev. Stat. § 302A-1132(a)(5) (compulsory attendance exception for home schooling); Haw. Admin. R. tit. 8, subtit. 2, pt. 1, ch. 12 (Compulsory Attendance Exceptions), §§ 8-12-13 through 8-12-22 (notice, curriculum record, termination, educational neglect, testing and progress reports, instructor, credits, diploma, college entrance exams), adopted under Haw. Rev. Stat. §§ 302A-1112 and 302A-1132; DOE Form 4140.

Source: https://boe.hawaii.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/12-Compulsory-Attendance-Exceptions.pdf

Last reviewed: July 2026, on the 26th.

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.