Homeschool Requirements in Texas
Texas asks nothing of you each year. No yearly notice. No registration, no testing, nothing to send in. What your children are taught, and why, stays between you and the One you answer to. One step is still yours, and it is the one families miss: a child who is enrolled in a public school right now has to be withdrawn, and reading this page does not do it. Do that first. Everything below is what Texas actually requires, with the code named at the foot so you can read it for yourself.
What you send in, and when it is due
None. Texas requires no notice, no registration, no affidavit, and no approval. Home schools are private schools under Tex. Educ. Code § 25.086(a)(1) per the Texas Supreme Court’s decision in TEA v. Leeper (1994), and TEA states it does not regulate, index, monitor, approve, register, or accredit homeschools. There is one exception. If your child is currently enrolled in a public school, give the school written notice of withdrawal stating the date you begin homeschooling. That heads off truancy referrals. Districts occasionally send a “letter of assurance” asking you to confirm you meet the Leeper standard; responding is voluntary.
Days and hours
None. No minimum days, hours, or school calendar.
Subjects the law names
Under Leeper, three requirements: (1) instruction must be bona fide (genuine, not a sham or subterfuge); (2) the curriculum must be in visual form (books, workbooks, video/monitor, not purely oral); and (3) it must cover five basic subjects: reading, spelling, grammar, mathematics, and good citizenship. “Good citizenship” is read as civics-equivalent, U.S./Texas history and government, the Pledge, and similar.
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
None required by statute. No attendance records, portfolios, reports, or submissions. Keep your own records anyway. Curriculum must be “in visual form,” so the books, workbooks and programs you used are the evidence that would answer a bona fide challenge. That is the only situation in which records ever matter in Texas.
Testing and evaluation
None. No standardized testing, no evaluation, no assessment of any kind. STAAR is not required and generally not available to homeschoolers.
The diploma and the transcript
The parent is the school administrator: the parent sets graduation requirements, awards credit, signs the transcript, and issues the diploma. There are no state credit, Carnegie-unit, or endorsement requirements for homeschoolers, and Texas issues no state diploma. Texas public universities and colleges may not discriminate against homeschool applicants, and homeschool graduates are eligible for state financial aid. HB 3041 (2025) clarified homeschool applicants’ eligibility for programs such as TEXAS Grants, effective the Fall 2026 semester. Two 2025 changes are worth noting. (1) HB 2674, the Homeschool Freedom Act, signed June 20, 2025, effective Sept. 1, 2025, prohibits TEA, the SBOE, and other public educational institutions from adopting rules that increase regulation of home schools without express legislative authorization. It puts Leeper’s hands-off standard into statute. (2) SB 2, signed May 3, 2025, creates a ~$1B universal ESA program with homeschooled students eligible for roughly $2,000/year (up to $30,000 for certain students with disabilities), first usable in the 2026-27 school year. Participating in the ESA is voluntary and brings program-specific expense reporting and, per the program rules, an assessment obligation. That is a different legal posture from unregulated Leeper homeschooling.
A diploma you signed yourself rests on the transcript behind it and on nothing else. What does not belong on a homeschool transcript.
If the transcript is the piece you are short of, it is free on its own: The Transcript Template, with the weighted and unweighted GPA already working.
Where this comes from
Statute: Tex. Educ. Code § 25.086(a)(1); Tex. Educ. Agency v. Leeper, 893 S.W.2d 432 (Tex. 1994); 2025 Tex. Sess. Law (HB 2674, Homeschool Freedom Act, eff. 9/1/2025); SB 2 (ESA, 2025)
Source: https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/ED/htm/ED.25.htm
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.