Homeschooling in California

Yes, you can do this here. California’s main home-based private-school path uses one annual affidavit, clear instructional duties, and records you can keep as you go.

If you are wondering whether homeschooling works where you live, the answer in California is yes. Families may teach at home by establishing a home-based private school and filing one form with the state. Once you understand that idea, everything else on this page follows from it.

How California is put together

California’s compulsory attendance law does not create a separate homeschool category. Families educate at home through the private school exemption or the credentialed tutor exemption. Children are subject to compulsory full-time education from age six until age eighteen unless they fall under one of those exemptions.

California families may use three at-home arrangements under these exemptions. Public charter schools and public independent study may also occur at home; they remain public-school enrollment.

Your own home-based private school. You establish a private school in your home, file the Private School Affidavit yourself, and carry the school’s responsibilities. This is the main path and most of this page describes it.

Enrollment in an existing California private school. A private school satellite program, a private online school, or a home-study program. The same exemption applies, but that school is the school of record and files its own affidavit.

A credentialed private tutor. A separate exemption with its own conditions, including a valid California teaching credential.

Public charter schools and public independent study. These carry the applicable public school oversight and testing. A home-based private school is private education and does not receive public-school curriculum, materials, or testing as an automatic entitlement.

• Instruction by persons capable of teaching, in a private full-time day school. Education Code 48222

• Instruction in the English language. Education Code 48222

• Instruction in the several branches of study required to be taught in California’s public schools. Education Code 48222, with the subject lists at Education Code 51210 for grades one through six and 51220 for grades seven through twelve

• A register of attendance kept by the school, showing clearly every absence of a half day or more on each day school is maintained. Education Code 48222

• An annual Private School Affidavit filed with the California Department of Education, under penalty of perjury, between October 1 and 15. Education Code 33190

• Use English as the language of instruction throughout your school program.

• Hundreds of courses can help cover these subject areas. Review the statutory lists to see the full set for your child’s grade band, and use the Education Plan Builder to lay out your year against them.

• Keep attendance as the school operates. Applecore Record Keeping can hold attendance, while the High School Hours Tracking Logs can support your records for older students.

• You file it yourself online. What it contains, and when the system is open, are explained just below.

When you can file, and what happens with the district

The statutory filing period is October 1 through October 15. Separately, the Department of Education keeps its filing system available from August 1 through June 30 to accommodate new schools and home schools, so a family starting in February is not shut out. The system is closed for the entire month of July.

If you are starting during July, you are not stuck waiting. The Department’s own guidance to school districts says that during that month parents may withdraw their children and begin homeschooling before filing an affidavit, and that verification takes place after the system reopens on August 1.

The Department also tells districts that filing the affidavit is not a prerequisite to withdrawing a child, and that a district’s disenrollment procedures may not require proof of a filed affidavit before the withdrawal process can begin. What the Department does say is that a student is not exempt from compulsory education until the district has verified that the filing requirement has been met.

So four things are worth holding together. California does not require a separate local notice of intent in addition to the affidavit. You file the affidavit with the California Department of Education and keep the filed copy and your confirmation. The district is responsible for verifying that the filing requirement has been met. And if your district asks you for evidence, you may give it a copy of your filed affidavit, though some districts verify directly through the Department’s own search tool instead.

If you enroll in an existing California private school

Some California families teach at home while enrolled in an existing California private school. That school may offer a private school satellite program (PSP), a private online program, or a home-study program. This arrangement applies when the California private school is the school of record.

What changes is who carries the obligations. When a California private school is your school of record, that school files the Private School Affidavit and holds the school-level duties, including the attendance register, the courses of study, and the faculty records. You do not file a second affidavit of your own.

One thing works differently, and the Department of Education answers it directly. If your child is enrolled in an online school located outside California, you do still file an affidavit. The Department’s position is that your California affidavit becomes the school of record and the out-of-state enrollment supplies your curriculum. An out-of-state program does not remove California’s filing requirement.

The credentialed private tutor

California has a second, separate exemption for instruction by a credentialed private tutor. Its conditions are different from everything above. Under Education Code 48224, a child not attending a private full-time day school is exempt when all of the following are true.

The tutor or other person holds a valid California state credential for the grade taught. Instruction runs at least three hours a day, for 175 days each calendar year, between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. It is given in the English language and covers the several branches of study required to be taught in California’s public schools.

No Private School Affidavit is filed on this path. The hours, the days, and the time-of-day window belong to this exemption alone and do not apply to a home-based private school.

A parent who holds the required California credential may use either route. She may teach under the tutor exemption, or she may establish a home-based private school instead. The Christian Home Educators Association of California observes that many parents who qualify for the tutor exemption choose the private school path, because the tutor exemption carries those specific hours, days, and time-of-day restrictions.

Immunization

Health and Safety Code section 120335 is the law requiring proof of immunization before a school admits a pupil. Subdivision (f) states that the section does not apply to a pupil in a home-based private school. It also does not apply to a pupil enrolled in an independent study program who does not receive classroom-based instruction, and that classroom-based qualification belongs to the independent study half of the sentence rather than to the home-based private school half.

If your child has a disability

The Department of Education states that California recognizes home schools as private elementary and secondary schools, so a home-schooled child with a disability is treated the same way as any other parentally placed private school child with a disability.

Three things follow. Your school district has a child find obligation to locate, identify, and evaluate children with disabilities enrolled by their parents in private schools within its boundaries, undertaking activities similar to those it undertakes for its own students. A parentally placed private school student does not have an individual right to every service she would receive through public school enrollment. And a student who is selected to receive equitable services receives them under a services plan.

Equitable services through a services plan are different from an individualized education program (IEP) and the offer of a free appropriate public education (FAPE) available through public-school enrollment.

Health and Safety Code section 120335 also provides that it does not prohibit a pupil who qualifies for an individualized education program from accessing the special education and related services required by that program.

High school records and credentials

Under the affidavit path, your family’s school is the private school. A private school sets its own graduation requirements and issues its own diploma. Filing the affidavit does not confer state approval or accreditation, so the diploma is your school’s, issued on the requirements your school set.

Keep a transcript and course descriptions as you go. Those are prudent records rather than statutory duties, and they are what a receiving school, college, employer, or branch of service will actually look at when it makes its own decision.

California also offers an optional credential that has nothing to do with graduating. The California High School Proficiency Examination, the former CHSPE, was discontinued in 2023 and replaced by the California Proficiency Program, which uses the State Board of Education-approved HiSET subtests in language arts and mathematics. A student who passes both earns a Certificate of Proficiency issued by the State Board of Education, which the Department describes as the legal equivalent of a California high school diploma.

Eligibility requires being currently subject to California’s compulsory education law, plus one of three age or grade conditions: being sixteen or older, having been enrolled in grade ten for at least one school year, or expecting to complete one school year in grade ten by the end of the testing semester. Enrollment in a private school registered by affidavit, including one operated by a parent, is one way to establish the compulsory education condition. The program is entirely optional and it is not a homeschool graduation requirement.

If college is ahead, review the current admission requirements of the University of California and the California State University systems directly. Their requirements are their own and they change.

Your California year

Compulsory school age. From age six until age eighteen.

October 1 through 15. The statutory filing period for the Private School Affidavit.

August 1 through June 30. The Department of Education’s filing system is open across the school year to accommodate new schools and home schools, so a family beginning mid-year files when it begins.

July. The filing system is closed. If you are starting during July, you may withdraw and begin homeschooling, and file once the system reopens on August 1.

If your child is currently enrolled in school. Follow the school or district’s withdrawal procedure. File the affidavit promptly once the system is open. Keep the filed affidavit and your confirmation, and if the district asks for a copy for verification, provide it. Some districts verify through the Department’s own search tool instead.

Through the year. Keep the attendance register as you go. Hold your courses of study and your faculty records at the address you named on the affidavit.

Each fall. File again. The affidavit is annual.

What comes with one membership

SchoolhouseTeachers.com is your home base for two things at once.

The Curriculum Lane. Hundreds of online, self-paced courses for preschool through twelfth grade from a Biblical worldview, plus interactive iST courses, Virtual School Boxes, World Book Online, and thousands of family-friendly videos.

The Records Lane. The Homeschool Records & Compliance Center, with the Education Plan Builder, Custom Schedule Builder, Portfolio Builder, Applecore Record Keeping, Schoolhouse Gradebook, Portfolio Review Template, High School Hours Tracking Logs, Certificates of Completion, and transcript templates and tools that members use to prepare their own transcripts.

One membership covers every child in the family. No per-child fees, no per-course fees.

California asks you to be a school, which means keeping a school’s records. Your curriculum and your records work together to show the education you provided.

Questions? Call 1.888.718.HOME or email customerservice@theoldschoolhouse.com. A real homeschooler answers.