Homeschool Requirements in Washington

Washington 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

File a signed Declaration of Intent to Provide Home-Based Instruction annually with the superintendent of the public school district of residence, or of the district the parent enrolls the child in part-time. Due by September 15 each year, or within two weeks of the beginning of any public-school quarter, trimester, or semester. Must state the child’s name and age and whether a certificated person will supervise the instruction; format prescribed by OSPI. Required only for children of compulsory age (8 through 17); children under 8 need not be declared.

Days and hours

Home-based instruction must be provided for at least the annual average total program hours per grade level established for approved private schools, 1,000 hours per school year for grades 1-12 (450 hours for kindergarten) under RCW 28A.195.010. The 180-day requirement that applies to schools does not apply to home-based instruction; parents control the calendar, scheduling, timing, and place of instruction (RCW 28A.200.020).

Subjects the law names

Eleven subject areas must be included: occupational education, science, mathematics, language, social studies, history, health, reading, writing, spelling, and appreciation of art and music (RCW 28A.225.010(4)). They may be taught in an integrated/unit-study fashion. Parent qualification is also required, one of four routes: (1) supervision by a Washington-certificated person averaging one contact hour per week (max 30 students per supervisor), (2) 45 college quarter credits (or semester equivalent), (3) completion of a parent-qualifying course in home-based instruction at a WA community/vocational-technical college or approved provider, or (4) being deemed sufficiently qualified by the local school district superintendent.

What you keep

Parents must keep the child’s annual standardized test scores or written academic progress assessment, immunization records, and any other records relating to instructional and educational activities. These are private parental records, they are not filed with the state or district. Parents must forward the test/assessment results and immunization records to any public or private school the child later transfers into. RCW 28A.200.010 makes the assessment results part of the child’s permanent record.

Testing and evaluation

An assessment is required every year, and the parent picks the form: either (a) a standardized achievement test approved by the State Board of Education, administered by a qualified individual, or (b) a written annual assessment of academic progress by a certificated person currently working in the field of education. Results are not submitted to the state or district; they are retained by the parent. If the assessment shows the child is not making reasonable progress for their age and development, the parent must make a good-faith effort to remedy the deficiency. Home-based students are exempt from state learning standards and the state high school assessments.

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

No state homeschool diploma. The parent (as the home-based instruction provider) issues the transcript and diploma; Washington neither accredits nor validates them. Home-based students are exempt from the state graduation requirements and High School and Beyond Plan. Key access points: Running Start (RCW 28A.600.300 et seq.) lets 11th and 12th graders take tuition-free college courses through the district for dual credit, the single most useful way to generate accredited, third-party transcripts; part-time public-school enrollment and ancillary services are available and are not affected by filing the declaration. Colleges commonly accept parent-issued transcripts; keep detailed course descriptions, credit values, and the annual test/assessment results. Some WA public colleges also accept the state’s own certificates as diploma equivalents (GED at 16+ with conditions).

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: Wash. Rev. Code 28A.225.010(4) (definition, 11 subjects, parent qualifications); RCW 28A.200.010 (declaration of intent, testing/assessment, records); RCW 28A.200.020 (parental control of curriculum/method); RCW 28A.195.010 (annual program hours, 1,000 hrs grades 1-12); RCW 28A.600.300-.400 (Running Start)

Source: https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=28A.200.010

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.