Families choosing to homeschool in North Dakota must follow specific statutory filing requirements, instructional timelines, and supervisory pathways managed under state guidelines.
When filing a statement of intent to educate a child at home, parents must include several specific items. The documentation requires the child’s name, address, date of birth, and grade level, alongside the supervising parent’s name, address, and qualifications. Families must also list any public-school courses the student plans to take and the district offering them, as well as any extracurricular activities and the district or approved nonpublic school providing them. Filings also require a copy of the child's immunization record or qualifying exemption documentation, alongside proof of the child's identity.
North Dakota defines acceptable proof of identity as a certified birth certificate, a certified transcript or similar records from a previous school, or other documentary evidence the superintendent considers appropriate. The current state form also asks a newly filing parent to attach supporting documentation for a high school diploma or GED, while providing the monitoring section and testing-exemption choices.
Parents or Guardians Supervise Home Education
The person supervising home education must be the child’s parent or legal guardian. Supervision encompasses choosing materials, determining the educational approach, and overseeing how instruction is delivered. A parent who holds a high school diploma or GED qualifies to supervise automatically.
Parents without a high school diploma or GED may still supervise under the statutory monitoring pathway. This monitoring generally lasts for the first two years and is performed by a licensed or approved teacher. Oversight persists for at least one extra academic year if a student in this category achieves a national basic composite standardized achievement test score beneath the fiftieth percentile, and will continue until the pupil attains a score at or surpassing that fiftieth percentile mark. Twice every school year, the designated monitor submits progress updates, dedicating roughly one hour weekly to the initial child and parent, alongside an additional thirty minutes monthly for every extra home-schooled student.
State Rules Mandate Daily Instructional Hours and Subjects
State rules require home education programs to provide at least four hours of instruction each day for at least 175 days each year. Instruction must include the subjects required by law for public-school students.
Mandatory elementary and middle-school topics under the legal framework consist of English language arts encompassing reading, composition, creative writing, grammar, and spelling, together with mathematics, science incorporating agriculture, and social studies which must incorporate the United States Constitution, United States history, geography, government, and North Dakota studies specifically during grades four and eight. Additional required subjects include physical education, health (comprising physiology, hygiene, disease control, and the effects of alcohol, tobacco, and narcotics), and computer science, including cybersecurity.
For high school students, families use the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction’s current graduation guidance to plan credits. Minimum state graduation mandates for home-schooled high school students require four English credits, three credits apiece in mathematics, science, and social studies, one physical education or health credit, three credits chosen from language, fine arts, or career and technical education, one credit in computer science or cybersecurity, and five elective credits.
