Homeschool Requirements in Missouri

Missouri 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

None. Missouri requires no notice of intent, no registration and no annual report. One recent change matters. The old optional “declaration of enrollment” that home school parents could file with the district superintendent or the county recorder within 30 days was removed when S.B. 63 rewrote Mo. Rev. Stat. § 167.042 effective August 28, 2025. Section 167.042 now provides only that if a parent gives the public school written notification of intent to pursue other educational options under § 167.031 and asks that the child be dropped from the rolls, the district must promptly remove the child. So no filing is required. If your child is currently enrolled, send that written withdrawal notice and keep a copy. It is now the operative document.

Days and hours

1,000 hours of instruction per school year (July 1 - June 30), of which at least 600 hours must be in reading, language arts, mathematics, social studies, science, or academic courses related to those areas and consonant with the child’s age and ability, and at least 400 of those 600 core hours must occur at the regular home school location. These requirements do not apply to any pupil 16 years of age or older.

Subjects the law names

For the 600 core hours: reading, language arts, mathematics, social studies, and science (or related academic courses appropriate to the child’s age and ability). The remaining 400 hours are unrestricted. No state agency may dictate a statewide curriculum for home schools, and no home school can be required to include content conflicting with its religious doctrines (§ 167.031.2).

The law names the subjects. It does not name the course titles a registrar will read, and Bible is where that gap costs families most. Booking Bible as a real subject on a transcript.

What you keep

Required, though never submitted. The parent must maintain: (a) a plan book, diary or other written record indicating subjects taught and activities engaged in; (b) a portfolio of samples of the child’s academic work; and (c) a record of evaluations of the child’s academic progress, or other written or credible evidence equivalent to those three. Records stay in the parent’s possession. Production of a daily log showing a course of instruction satisfying the statute is an affirmative defense to prosecution under § 167.031 and to any educational-neglect charge under ch. 210, and home school enforcement and records are subject to review only by the local prosecuting attorney (not by the school district or DESE). Hour logs are the practical core of this, log the 1,000/600/400 split contemporaneously. Not required for a pupil 16 or older.

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. No standardized testing, no evaluation by a third party, no progress reporting. The statute requires only that the parent keep “a record of evaluations of the child’s academic progress” in their own files, a parent-generated record satisfies this.

The diploma and the transcript

Parent-issued diplomas and transcripts; Missouri issues no state homeschool diploma and there is no state accreditation or approval. Missouri is unusual in defining a credit by statute: for purposes of compulsory attendance, “a completed credit towards high school graduation” means one hundred hours or more of instruction in a course (§ 167.031.5). Compulsory attendance ends at 17, or upon completing 16 credits toward high school graduation, so a homeschooled student who has logged 16 credits at 100 hours each is out of compulsory attendance regardless of age. The § 167.012 recordkeeping and hours requirements do not apply to any pupil 16 or older. Missouri has statutory equal access for homeschool students to public school interscholastic activities (MSHSAA participation). A structural change landed in 2024 and 2025. S.B. 727 and H.B. 2287 (2024), amended by S.B. 63 (2025), split the old single “home school” category into two. A “home school” (§ 167.012) may not enroll any student who participates in the MOScholars Empowerment Scholarship Accounts Program (§§ 135.712-135.719, 166.700-166.720). A family that wants MOScholars ESA money must instead operate as a “Family Paced Education (FPE) school” under § 167.013, which carries identical hours, subject and recordkeeping requirements but is a separate legal category and may enroll ESA participants without a background check. Both categories cap enrollment at no more than four students unrelated within the third degree and prohibit charging tuition or other remuneration for instruction. Families should be told explicitly: taking a MOScholars ESA converts your home school into an FPE school as a matter of law.

Where the law names religion

Missouri writes the protection into the statute. Section 167.031.2 provides that no state agency may dictate a statewide curriculum for home schools, and that no home school can be required to include content conflicting with its religious doctrines. The hours and the log are still owed. What you teach inside them is yours.

Where this comes from

Statute: Mo. Rev. Stat. § 167.012 (home school defined; 1,000/600/400 hours; required records; daily log defense), § 167.013 (FPE school; identical requirements, ESA-eligible), § 167.031 (compulsory attendance; school year; 100-hour credit definition; no state curriculum), § 167.042 (written withdrawal notice, as amended by S.B. 63, eff. Aug. 28, 2025), § 167.061; both § 167.012 and § 167.013 enacted L. 2024 H.B. 2287 merged with S.B. 727, A.L. 2025 S.B. 63

Source: https://revisor.mo.gov/main/OneSection.aspx?section=167.012

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.