Homeschool Attendance Requirements by State — and the Tracker That Knows Yours

Can I ask you something? Have you ever laid in bed at eleven at night doing math you couldn’t quite finish? Was that 140 days, or 160? Is 180 even my number?

If so, you’re in very good company. Almost every mom who writes to us is certain of two things: that she owes 180 days, and that she’s behind. Most of the time neither one is true. And honestly, the not-knowing costs a lot more sleep than the record-keeping ever did.

So we rebuilt the Family Attendance Tracker around that exact eleven-o’clock feeling. It’s live today for everybody, including the free Starter plan. Let me show you what your state actually asks of you first — because that part surprises almost everyone.

Homeschool attendance requirements by state aren’t one rule. They’re five.

The 180 number is real. It’s just that in most places it belongs to the public school down the road, not to you.

When you sit down and read the homeschool laws one state at a time, the picture gets a lot messier — and a lot kinder — than any of us expected.

What the law asks for	How many	A few examples
Nothing specific	29	Texas, Michigan, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, Ohio
Days only	8	Louisiana 180 · Maine 175 · Vermont 175
Days and hours	8	Georgia 180 days of at least 4.5 hours · Kentucky 170 days and 1,062 hours · New York 180 days and 900 hours
Hours only	4	Missouri 1,000 · Nebraska 1,032 · Wisconsin 875 · Montana 720
Either days or hours	2	Pennsylvania 180 days or 900 hours · Washington 180 days or 1,000 hours

Look at those middle two rows again, because this is where good moms get tangled up. “Days and hours” and “days or hours” sound almost identical and mean opposite things.

In Georgia you owe both — 180 days, and each of those days has to be at least four and a half hours. In Pennsylvania you’re done at 180 days or 900 hours, whichever comes first. One little word, a completely different school year.

And a few states — Indiana, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Rhode Island — never wrote a homeschool number down at all. They just say “about what the public school does,” so that’s the number we start you with.

More than half of us are chasing a number our state never asked us for.

Why looking it up online isn’t enough anymore

Here’s the story that made us build this.

Ohio families used to owe 900 hours a year. That rule was repealed back in October 2023. It simply isn’t the law anymore.

But go search for it today and you’ll still find printables, checklists and kind, well-meaning forum answers telling Ohio moms to log 900 hours. Nobody’s being sneaky. The internet just doesn’t update itself.

So picture a mom in Dayton doing everything right, trusting the first three results, and spending a whole year quietly counting hours that nobody was ever going to ask her for.

So we stopped asking you to look it up

Now we just look at the state on your account and do it for you. There’s no dropdown to hunt for, no settings page, no homework. You open the tracker and your number is already sitting there, with the rule written out underneath it in plain English.

1. Your number is just thereWe pull it from your state and say it in a sentence — like “Georgia requires 180 days of at least 4.5 hours each.”
2. Each child gets a little ringIt fills up as you go, and tells you days done, days to go, or a green “Goal met.” No counting squares on the wall calendar in April.
3. Change it whenever you likeTap Edit goal and set your days, your total hours, or your hours per day. Change one and the others follow along, so they can never contradict each other.
4. It doesn’t disappear over the summerWhatever you set stays set. It won’t quietly reset itself on you every August.

And if you’re in one of the 29 states with no requirement, we tell you that straight out instead of inventing a rule for you. You can still pick a goal — a lot of moms like having a finish line — but we’ll call it yours, not your state’s.

Marking a whole year takes about one click

Knowing your number is only half the battle. The other half is that logging the days has to be faster than feeling guilty about not logging them.

Tell it you school Monday through Friday, hit apply, and those are your days for the year. It replaces what was there rather than piling on top of it, so you get exactly what you asked for — and because it replaces, it warns you and asks first.

It also remembers what you picked last time. So if your co-op has you doing Tuesday through Friday, you set that once and never think about it again.

• One click marks a full year for every child at once
• Tap single days for the weeks that go sideways — and they always do
• Days outside your school year are greyed out, so they can’t pad your total
• The same goal now shows up on each child’s own Attendance tab too

The one page you can hand to anybody who asks

Most of us will never have to show a soul. But if your district, your umbrella school, or your mother-in-law does ask, you want one clean page — not a shoebox and an apology.

Days, hours, and hours per day, all on one line. That’s exactly what a “days and hours” state wants to see.

We keep that list of state rules inside the app and go back through it every year, because a compliance number that quietly goes stale is worse than no number at all. We haven’t found another homeschool record-keeping tool that sets your goal from your state for you — and if you know of one, I’d honestly love to see it.

You’re not raising these kids to satisfy a spreadsheet. The record-keeping is just the small, faithful part that keeps the rest of it free — and it ought to take minutes, not evenings.

One gentle caution: none of this is legal advice. Requirements can shift depending on your children’s grades and which legal option you homeschool under, and states do change their laws. Please check your own state’s rules, and treat the number in the tracker as the head start it’s meant to be.

Questions other moms ask us