Homeschooling in Virginia

You can start home instruction on any day of the school year. If you start after the year has begun, send the notice as soon as practicable; you can begin teaching at once and have 30 days from that notice to send the subject list and the proof of your option.

What the notice says

• That you intend to provide home instruction, and for which school year
• Each child's name, age as of September 30, and street address (the state's sample form makes date of birth optional)
• Which of the four options you qualify under, with its proof attached
• Your signature, printed name, address, and the date

The notice can be a letter or any other written document that identifies each child. VDOE publishes a sample form, and some divisions post their own.

State law sets no separate withdrawal procedure at the school. A child who stops attending with no notice on file is counted absent: after an unexplained absence the school must try to reach you, and after five it must contact you directly and set up an attendance plan. Sending the notice before your child's first day at home, and telling the school that date, avoids this.

Virginia asks you to hand documents in, not to keep them: the notice, the subject list, the proof of your option, and each year's evidence of progress. No attendance log, portfolio, or lesson record is required, and the division keeps what you send.

Your own copies come up again in these situations:

• Driver education: the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) asks for a copy of your notice of intent when you apply to teach the in-car part.
• Returning to public school: the school places your child and decides high school credit by reviewing the academic record you provide, including each course's hours of instruction.
• College and work: admissions offices and employers read a transcript listing each high school course with its grade and credit.

The evidence can be any one of these:

• A composite score in or above the fourth stanine on any nationally normed standardized achievement test. Score reports often show percentiles instead, and VDOE treats the 23rd percentile or higher as equal to the fourth stanine.
• An equivalent score on the ACT, SAT, or PSAT.
• An evaluation the superintendent accepts as showing adequate educational growth and progress. The law's examples are a letter from someone who knows your child's progress and is licensed to teach in any state or holds a master's degree or higher in an academic subject, or a report card or transcript from a college, a college distance learning program, or a home-education correspondence school.

VDOE keeps no list of approved tests; any nationally normed achievement test qualifies, and the law does not say who must give it. An evaluation must give the superintendent enough information to judge progress. Missing evidence, or evidence of too little progress, can lead to probation, explained below.

AP, PSAT, and PreACT exams

School boards must offer Advanced Placement (AP) exams, the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT), and the PreACT to home-instructed students. Each board sets a registration deadline in a written policy and must tell you about it and about financial help for low-income students.

Every school division must find, identify, and evaluate children with disabilities, a duty called Child Find. Virginia's special education regulations count a home-instructed child, and a child taught by an approved tutor, as a private school student, so the duty falls on the division where you live. To start, ask the division in writing for an evaluation. The evaluation and the eligibility decision must be finished within 65 business days after the division's special education administrator receives the referral.

If your child qualifies, the division writes a services plan, not the individualized education program (IEP) an enrolled student receives. The plan covers the services the division has chosen to offer private school students, paid from its share of federal special education funds.

Classes at the public school

A school board may let a home-instructed student enroll part time in English, mathematics, science, history, social science, foreign language, career and technical education, health, physical education, or fine arts, and may allow other courses too. It is the board's choice, not a right. Children taught by an approved tutor or excused for religious reasons cannot enroll part time. Separately, federal law requires a public high school with a Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps (JROTC) unit to admit qualified homeschooled students who live in the area the school serves.

VDOE says school boards typically award diplomas only to students enrolled in their own schools, so the school division does not issue one to a homeschooled student. A student who completes a correspondence school or other program that awards a diploma receives that program's diploma. State law says nothing about a diploma issued by a parent.

Neither VDOE nor the school divisions keep transcripts or diploma status for homeschooled students, so neither can confirm a homeschool graduation for a college, employer, or military recruiter. With your written consent, or the student's after age 18, a division can confirm that the student met the compulsory attendance law. A student 16 or older who has completed home instruction may also take the state's high school equivalency exam.

Driver education

Under home instruction you can teach driver education yourself. Your teen takes the classroom part at a driver training school, a public or private school, or through a correspondence course on DMV's approved list. To teach the in-car part, mail DMV form HS-1 with your notice of intent or the division's acknowledgment letter and the original classroom completion certificate, one set per child.

For a student under 18, the classroom part includes a 90-minute parent and teen course. In Planning District 8 (Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun, and Prince William counties and the cities of Alexandria, Fairfax, Falls Church, Manassas, and Manassas Park), that course is taken in person with a parent.

Virginia law sets no special admission rule for homeschool graduates, so each public college and university applies its own requirements. For state-supported financial aid and other state higher education programs, a student who completed home instruction, or who was excused for religious reasons, counts as having met the high school graduation requirements. When such a program requires a grade point average or class rank, the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia must set equivalent measures for these students.

Virginia's community colleges admit homeschooled students studying at the high school junior or senior level to dual enrollment with a parent's permission. The student must show readiness for each college course and meet its prerequisites. Federal and state financial aid do not cover dual enrollment, and courses taken on the college campus carry tuition.

Homeschool dual enrollment in Virginia

The Virginia High School League (VHSL), which runs public high school sports and academic competitions, does not let home-instructed students play for a member school. Its handbook says home school students are not eligible because they do not meet its bona fide student rule, which requires a regular, full-time student in good standing. Its enrollment rule also requires enrollment in the school by the fifteenth school day of the semester.

Home instruction still counts if your child later enrolls. VHSL treats it as school enrollment when it applies the transfer rule, which looks at where the family lives, and the scholarship rule, which requires passing five academic subjects in the previous semester. Clubs and activities outside VHSL follow each school board's own policy.

Homeschool sports eligibility in Virginia

Virginia has no tax credit, deduction, education savings account (ESA), or voucher for homeschool costs, and the home instruction law comes with no funding. You pay for materials and for each year's test or evaluation.

The related state tax break is for college savings. A Virginia529 account owner under age 70 can deduct up to $4,000 a year per account from Virginia taxable income and carry a larger contribution forward to later years; an owner 70 or older can deduct the full amount contributed.

Homeschool tax breaks and funding in Virginia

A child can enroll in a Virginia public school at any time, and each school board sets its own transfer process. In kindergarten through grade 8, automatic credit for completed grade levels applies only to students coming from public schools or accredited private schools. For a homeschooled child, the school evaluates the academic record and sets grade placement under local school board policy.

In high school, the school evaluates the record to count the standard units of credit your child has earned. Accepting a homeschool course is the school's choice: it may give credit when the course matches, or can substitute for, a course it credits, and the course met 140 clock hours of instruction.

A Virginia diploma also requires verified credits, each of which needs a passing score on a state Standards of Learning (SOL) end-of-course test or an approved substitute, and the number a transfer student needs depends on the grade of entry. A student entering above grade 10 from a program without health and physical education credit does not have to take those courses.

If the evidence of progress is missing, or shows your child is not making adequate progress, the superintendent may place the home instruction on probation for one year. To continue, you file evidence that you can provide an adequate education and a remediation plan for that year. The superintendent decides whether to accept them and does not have to. If they are not accepted, or the next evidence of progress is not in by August 1 after the probationary year, home instruction ends and your child must attend school or use another legal route.

You can appeal any decision of the division superintendent within 30 days to an independent hearing officer, chosen from the list the Supreme Court of Virginia keeps for special education placement appeals. The hearing officer divides the hearing costs among the parties according to the findings.

If a child of compulsory school age is neither in school nor covered by a notice or exemption, the attendance officer, with the superintendent's approval, can file a complaint against the parent in juvenile and domestic relations district court.