Homeschool Requirements in Montana
Montana 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
You file once a year. Notify the county superintendent of schools, not the local district and not OPI, of the child’s attendance at the home school in each school fiscal year. No state form is mandated; a letter suffices. Practice is to file before the first day of the public school year. If withdrawing from a public school, notify that school as well.
Days and hours
Hours, not days: 720 hours/year for grades 1-3 and 1,080 hours/year for grades 4-12 (mirrors the public-school pupil-instruction standard in 20-1-301 MCA). Kindergarten, where offered, is 360 hours.
A free one-page worksheet for turning hours into credits, with every rule it leans on quoted on the sheet: Counting a Credit.
Subjects the law names
An “organized course of study that includes instruction in the subjects required of public schools as a basic instructional program” (cross-referencing 20-7-111 MCA). In practice: language arts/English, math, science, social studies, arts, health/PE, and (secondary) career/vocational and technology. Parent controls philosophy, curriculum, methods, and evaluation.
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
One record, and only one. A home school “shall maintain records on pupil attendance and make the records available to the county superintendent on request” (20-5-109(2)(b) MCA). That is the whole legal duty. The immunization records and the requirement to be housed in a building that meets local health and safety rules sit in 20-5-109(1), which applies to nonpublic schools, not to home schools under 20-5-109(2). A home school is not asked for either one. Section 20-5-111 is the parental-authority section, not a records section: it says the parent is solely responsible for the philosophy, the materials and curriculum, the time, place and method of instruction, and the evaluation. Keep your own course, grade and work records anyway, because nobody else is keeping them for you.
Testing and evaluation
None. No standardized testing, no portfolio review, no state or district evaluation of homeschooled students.
The diploma and the transcript
Montana issues no state diploma to homeschoolers and does not accredit home schools. The parent, acting as administrator of a nonaccredited private school, awards the diploma and produces the transcript; there are no state credit requirements. Families targeting Montana University System admission commonly mirror the public-school ~20-credit pattern and the MUS college-prep course requirements, and should expect campuses to ask for test scores or a course-by-course transcript. Districts must have a policy for placing students transferring in from nonaccredited schools, including a hearing if the parent disputes placement, so grade/credit placement on re-entry to public school is district-discretionary, not guaranteed.
With no credential standing behind it, the page has to hold up on its own reading. What does not belong on a homeschool transcript.
Where this comes from
Statute: Mont. Code Ann. §§ 20-5-102, 20-5-109, 20-5-111; hours standard at § 20-1-301; subject baseline at § 20-7-111
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.