OUT-OF-STATE FAMILIES

Delaware Homeschool Requirements: Your Enrollment Report Is Due September 30, and the State's Own Reporting Page Still Says October 5

Delaware asks a homeschooling family for two filings a year and nothing else. Miss the enrollment one and the Department closes your school and marks your child withdrawn. The statute moved that deadline to September 30 in 2023. Two of the Department's three homeschool pages still print the old October 5. Here is the real law, the real dates, and the eleven other places Delaware reaches a homeschooling family.

Delaware has one of the shortest homeschool statutes in the country and one of the most consequential filing calendars. There is no testing requirement, no portfolio, no curriculum approval, no hours requirement and no parent qualification. There are two dates. This page is built on the Delaware Code as published by the General Assembly, the Delaware Administrative Code as published by the Registrar of Regulations, every page the Department of Education publishes for nonpublic schools, the enrolled text of the homeschool act signed this July, the athletic regulations the Department points families at, the scholarship statutes that name home schooled students by hand, and the colleges' own published standards. It is for families in Wilmington, Dover, Newark, Middletown, Bear, Smyrna, Milford, Seaford, Georgetown, Lewes, Rehoboth and every town in New Castle, Kent and Sussex counties.

The short version

Start here: the deadline that moved, and the page that did not

Delaware law puts two reporting duties on every nonpublic school in the state, which includes your homeschool. 14 Del. C. § 2704 is four lines long. Subsection (a):

All persons conducting nonpublic schools shall report end of the year attendance information to the Department of Education annually, on or before the July 31, on such forms as shall be prescribed by the Department of Education.

And subsection (b):

Such persons shall also submit annually, no later than September 30, a statement of pupil enrollment on such forms as prescribed by the Department of Education.

September 30. The Department of Education's main Homeschools and Private Schools page agrees, gives the 2026 window as August 11 through September 30, and adds a footnote explaining why:

The required date for completion of enrollment for nonpublic schools has changed from no later than October 5th of each year to no later than September 30th of each year. This was a legislative change that was approved by the General Assembly in June 2023.

That is the correct, current answer, published by the right office. Now open the sibling page. The Department's Annual Reporting and Data page, which is the page a family lands on when it goes looking for the deadline, quotes the same statute with the old number in it, then states the rule twice more in its own voice:

The enrollment reporting will open annually on August 10th. The enrollment reporting window will close annually on October 5th. If October 5th falls on a weekend, the enrollment reporting window will close the Friday before October 5th.

The same page's list of upcoming windows is dated to the 2025 school year and gives an enrollment close of October 3, which matches neither the statute nor the October 5 rule printed further down the same page. The Department's FAQ page also says enrollment is reported no later than October 5. So of the Department's three family-facing homeschool pages, one carries the current statutory date and two carry a date the General Assembly moved three years ago.

We are not writing that to score a point. A department publishes a lot of pages and a web calendar is nobody's first priority. We are writing it because of what the Annual Reporting page itself says happens next:

If a nonpublic school fails to report their enrollment information during the enrollment reporting period, the school will be closed and any student(s) enrolled at the end of the previous school year will be marked as withdrawn in the new school year.

Read that against § 2703, which is the section that exempts your child from compulsory attendance in the first place, and against the Department's own instruction that enrollment into a nonpublic school should not be used as a way to avoid truancy charges. A closed school with a withdrawn student is a child who, on paper, is enrolled nowhere. That is the single worst administrative position a Delaware homeschooling family can be in, and the difference between avoiding it and landing in it is five days that two state web pages disagree about.

What to do about it, today. This page published on September 18, 2026. The enrollment window opened August 11 and the statute closes it on September 30. Log into EdAccess, open the Nonpublic School Application, complete your enrollment submission, and then print the Acknowledgement Letter and the submitted report and keep both. Do not aim for October 5. Do not aim for September 30 either, because a filing system that rolls over on a fixed date is a bad thing to meet at the buzzer. Aim for this week, and if anything in the system disagrees with the statute, write to the nonpublic school office at nps@doe.k12.de.us, ask which date governs your filing this year, and keep the reply. The attendance half of the calendar, June 1 to July 31, is the one you will handle next summer.

The whole law, and it really is this short

Delaware's homeschool law is four sections of Title 14, Chapter 27. Here is all of it.

Section 2702 creates the duty. Subsection (a)(1):

Every person in this State who has legal custody, guardianship of the person, or legal control of a child between 5 and 16 years of age, including any person acting as a caregiver pursuant to the provisions of § 202(f) of this title, shall enroll the child in a public school in the school district of the person's residence.

Subsection (b) fixes the birthday cutoff: a child counts as 5 years old for a school year if the fifth birthday falls on or before August 31 of that year, and local school authorities may grant exceptions where they determine it is in the child's best interest.

Section 2703 is the exemption, and it is one sentence for you. After exempting private school students, it adds:

For the purposes of this section, any student who is home-schooled in any manner provided for in § 2703A of this title shall also be exempt from the provisions of § 2702 of this title.

The same section carries a warning worth reading twice: the Justice of the Peace Court may retain jurisdiction over a truancy case filed before a student withdraws from the public school bringing the charge and enrolls in a private or nonpublic school. Withdrawing does not erase a case already filed.

Section 2703A defines what a homeschool is. Its first sentence is the most important sentence in Delaware homeschool law and almost nobody quotes it. It says a homeschool

is considered a nonpublic school, except that students enrolled in homeschools are deemed to be parentally-placed private school children for purposes of providing equitable services using proportionate share funds under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 20 U.S.C. § 1400, et. seq.

Not a thing beside a nonpublic school. A nonpublic school. Hold onto that, because it is why the word nonpublic, and not the word homeschool, is the search term that unlocks the rest of Delaware law for you. Scholarships, driver education, athletic membership and tax all key on it.

Section 2704 is the two filings quoted at the top of this page. That is the complete list of what Delaware requires of a homeschooling parent: define your school, report attendance in July, report enrollment in September.

There is no testing requirement anywhere in the chapter. No portfolio. No subject list. No minimum number of instructional days or hours. No qualification or credential for the teaching parent. No approval of your curriculum, except in one of the three kinds of homeschool, which you choose voluntarily and which we cover next. We read the entire subchapter to say this rather than inferring it from a summary.

Three kinds of homeschool, and the Department describes two

Section 2703A(b) names three.

Single-family homeschool, defined as the education of an individual's own child, primarily by the parent or legal guardian of the child, mainly in their own residence. This is what most families mean by homeschooling.

Multi-family homeschool, defined as the education of children, primarily by the parents or legal guardians of the children mainly in 1 or more residences, or other facilities, when the children are not all related to each other as brother or sister. The statute adds a governance sentence:

A person shall act as a liaison to the Department of Education for reporting enrollment and attendance information for all families involved.

If you join a multi-family homeschool, the liaison files for everybody and hands you your copy of the Acknowledgement Letter. Your filing obligation runs through that person. Make sure you know who they are and that you have their paperwork in hand, because the consequence of a missed deadline lands on your child's record.

Single-family homeschool coordinated with the local school district, which is the one nobody writes about. The statute defines it as the education of a child primarily by the parent or legal guardian of the child, mainly in their own residence,

using a curriculum approved by the local superintendent or the local superintendent's designee. The local superintendent shall determine in writing that the student is or will be provided with regular and thorough instruction by the student's parent or legal guardian in the subjects prescribed for the public schools of the State and in a manner suitable to children of the same age and stage of advancement.

Two things about this third category. First, it is entirely optional; nothing in Chapter 27 pushes any family toward it. Second, what it produces is a written determination by your local superintendent that your child is receiving regular and thorough instruction in the subjects prescribed for the public schools. That is a piece of paper with a district's name on it, and this page is going to show you five or six different offices over the next few thousand words that want exactly that kind of paper years later.

The Department of Education's family-facing materials do not mention it. Its main homeschool page says there are two main types of homeschool, single-family and multi-family, and its Nonpublic Schools Information Packet says the same. We have not been able to find a Department page, form or packet describing the coordinated option or explaining how to ask a superintendent for it. That is not an accusation; a category almost nobody uses gets documented last. But it exists in the Code, it has been there since 2003, and if the district paper trail is attractive to you, the person to ask is your own district superintendent's office, in writing.

How you actually open a Delaware homeschool

Registration is online, free, and done through the Department's own systems. Its Register for a Nonpublic School page and the Information Packet give the same three steps.

  1. Apply for an EdAccess account and select the Nonpublic School Account option. You will be required to set up multi-factor authentication, and you will use it every time you log in. Do this first, because it is the step with an email round trip in it.
  2. Log into the Nonpublic School Application through EdAccess and register the school: the type of nonpublic school you are opening, the school's demographic and contact information, and each student to be enrolled. For a homeschool, the Department's instruction is to link your students to a parent or guardian. The application then sits in pending status until the Department reviews it.
  3. Print the Acknowledgement Letter once the application is approved. In the Department's words: Public schools will not withdraw your child(ren) to a NPS without this Acknowledgement Letter.

Three operational facts that are easy to trip over and are published only in small print.

The system closes every August to roll over. The Department's main homeschool page gives the closure as August 1 through August 11 with access returning August 12; its Annual Reporting page gives August 1 through August 10 with access returning August 10. Either way, if you are registering for the upcoming school year you cannot do it in the first week and a half of August. Plan around the second week, not the first.

Order matters when you are leaving public school. Both the packet and the registration page say the nonpublic school must be open and your child enrolled in it before the public school withdrawal, and that the Department must be made aware of the nonpublic status or the student will be considered truant in their previous public school. Open first, print the letter, then withdraw. Not the other way around.

An open truancy case blocks the door. The Information Packet states plainly:

The DDOE will deny a NPS application and/or student registration if an active truancy case exists.

The registration page adds that a district preparing to file truancy may still choose to pursue charges even if the student is enrolled in a homeschool first, and that enrollment into a nonpublic school should not be used as a way to avoid truancy charges. If attendance is the reason you are looking at homeschooling, treat the attendance case and the homeschool registration as two separate problems, and get advice on the first one.

If you are moving into Delaware, you do not need to hand the Department any records from your previous state, and you have no public school to withdraw from. If you are moving out, submit a support request and select School Closure so the Department closes the school rather than letting it lapse into the missed-deadline outcome above.

The Acknowledgement Letter, and why to print it more often than you think

Delaware issues a homeschooling family exactly one official document, and it is easy to treat as a receipt. The Department describes it as the official document showing that your nonpublic school has been registered, says it also shows the status of your student enrollment, and encourages you to keep a copy any time the status of your school or a student changes. You find it inside the Nonpublic School Application under the Records tab, and you can print all students or selected students.

Here is why it deserves a folder rather than a downloads directory. Across the rest of this page, this one letter turns up in four unrelated places.

The cost of a print is zero. The cost of needing a 2019 status letter from a system that only shows you the current one is a phone call you do not want to make in August. Print it every year, at the moment you file enrollment, and keep it with the submitted enrollment report.

What Delaware never asks you for, in the state's own words

Families coming from a testing or portfolio state keep asking whether they have missed something. You have not. The Department is unusually direct about the shape of the deal. From its main homeschool page:

The DDOE does not provide, endorse, accredit, approve or monitor curriculum for any nonpublic school (private or homeschool), or validate any type of credential provided by those schools.

From its FAQ, on days: the Department does not require a specific number of days for nonpublic schools to be open during a school year, and does not collect attendance information throughout the school year, because attendance is reported as an aggregate total in the June to July window. Many nonpublic schools model the public calendar and run about 180 days, and the FAQ says plainly that this is not a requirement.

From the same FAQ, on testing: the Department does not administer or provide state assessments to nonpublic school students, and points families at private options for the PSAT, SAT, ACT and AP exams, without recommending one and without funding any of them.

From the same FAQ, on grades and promotion: the Department does not issue report cards for any nonpublic school and does not determine whether a student is qualified for promotion. Both grading and promotion are determined by the homeschool's primary contact or administrator, and promotion is reported with the annual enrollment submission.

And from the Information Packet, the sentence that sums up the whole arrangement:

This means once you open the school, you are the administrator of that school and you are responsible for curriculum selection, attendance records, etc.

One wrinkle that surprises people: an online school or curriculum is not a Delaware nonpublic school. The Department's position is that online schools, programs and curricula do not report enrollment and attendance to it, so your child must be enrolled in an open Delaware homeschool first, and you may then use whatever online curriculum you like as long as the homeschool stays in open status. Delaware also does not allow registration of online or digital private schools; a registered private school must have a physical Delaware address.

When compulsory attendance starts and ends, and the two answers the Department gives

The statute says 5 to 16. The Department's registration page opens with this sentence:

If you live in Delaware and your child(ren) is/are between the ages of 5 (by August 31st of the school year) and 18, your child(ren) must be enrolled in a public or nonpublic (private or homeschool) school.

The Department's own Information Packet, on a neighbouring question, says something different:

You do not have to open a homeschool with the DDOE if your child is 16 or older; however, we welcome and encourage you to do so.

Those two cannot both be a complete description of the law, and the statute sides with the packet. Section 2702(a)(1) reaches a child between 5 and 16 years of age, full stop.

We are not going to tell you the registration page is simply wrong, because there is a real provision underneath it and you should know about it. Section 2702(a)(2) and (a)(3) attach a daily attendance duty to any student who is enrolled in a public school, with no upper age in the sentence. And section 2702(i) says a child over the age of 16 may withdraw from public school prior to graduation only if two things happen: written consent from a parent or guardian where the student is under 18, and an exit interview in which the student and parent are advised about the effects of early withdrawal, given Department-prepared information, and walked through available support services. The school must make three good faith attempts to schedule that interview.

So a sixteen or seventeen year old currently enrolled in a Delaware public school cannot simply stop going. There is a formal exit, and it has a meeting in it. A sixteen or seventeen year old who is not enrolled in a public school is outside section 2702 by its own words. Those are different situations, and the registration page's single sentence covers both with the stricter answer.

The practical advice, and it costs nothing. If your child is 16 or 17 and you are taking them out of a Delaware public school, do the exit interview properly and open the homeschool anyway. Registration is free, it takes an evening, and it is what generates the Acknowledgement Letter that half the offices in this guide will eventually ask you for. If you want the Department's own position on your specific child's age and status, ask the nonpublic school office in writing and keep the answer.

Special education: what section 2703A actually gives you, stated honestly

Delaware did something in 2021 that very few states have done: it wrote homeschooled children into its education code with a defined federal special education status. The act was Senate Bill 106, enacted as 83 Del. Laws, c. 87 and approved July 29, 2021, and its whole job was to add that clause to section 2703A. Its title says so: an act relating to services for children with disabilities in homeschools.

What it gives you is that your homeschooled child is deemed to be a parentally-placed private school child for purposes of equitable services using proportionate share funds under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

What that is. Under federal law a district must set aside a proportionate share of its federal special education money to serve children with disabilities whose parents have placed them in private schools in the district. Before 2021, whether a Delaware homeschooled child counted for that purpose was a question a district could answer either way. Now the statute answers it.

What that is not, and we would rather you hear it here than in a meeting. Equitable services under the proportionate share are not the same thing as the individualized entitlement a child in public school has. There is no individual right to a particular service, the pool of money is limited and shared, districts design the services after consulting private school representatives, and a services plan is not an IEP. Your child keeps the right to be identified and evaluated. What the 2021 act settles is that your family is inside the category, not what the category will hand you.

We looked for Department of Education guidance written for homeschooling families on this and did not find any; its special education pages for families do not mention homeschooled or parentally-placed students. So the move is to go to the district directly, in writing, naming section 2703A(a) and asking two questions: how the district identifies and evaluates parentally-placed children, and what services its proportionate share currently funds. Ask before you need it. Evaluations have timelines and the school year has a shape.

Sports and activities: the answer today, the regulation the Department cites, and the law passed in July

Start with the honest headline: as Delaware law and the athletic regulations stand today, a homeschooled student cannot play on a public school team. That is the answer, and a stated no is a service. But the details matter, because the Department's version of the no cites the wrong regulations, uses a word that appears in none of them, and omits a route that exists.

Here is what the Department's FAQ tells families:

Delaware Interscholastic Athletic Association (DIAA) regulations 1008 and 1009 require that in order for a student to represent a school in interscholastic athletics they must be enrolled at that school as a full-time student and the school must be a member school of the DIAA.

We read both of those regulations end to end. 14 DE Admin. Code 1008 is DIAA Junior High and Middle School Interscholastic Athletics and 1009 is DIAA High School Interscholastic Athletics. Neither contains an enrollment rule. Neither contains the phrase full-time student as an eligibility requirement; in 1009 the words full-time appear twice, once about a parent employed full-time by a Delaware district and once about a relative caregiver providing full-time care. Neither regulation contains the word homeschool anywhere.

The enrollment rule lives in a third regulation the FAQ does not name. 14 DE Admin. Code 1028, Student Athlete Eligibility: Enrollment and Attendance, published at 28 DE Reg. 120 on August 1, 2024, opens by saying that

this regulation sets forth the eligibility to participate in interscholastic athletics at the middle and high school levels for students who enroll in and attend Member Schools.

Its section 3.2 is the rule:

A student shall be legally enrolled in the Member School which they represent in order to participate in a tryout, practice, scrimmage, or contest.

Legally enrolled, not full-time. That distinction is not academic, because the same subsection goes on to handle a student who attends 2 different schools during the regular school day and assigns eligibility to the school where the student receives instruction in the core academic areas and satisfies the majority of graduation requirements. For a homeschooled child, that school is your kitchen table, which is why part-time enrollment in a district course would not on its own solve the problem. We have not found a Delaware decision or a DIAA interpretation addressing that exact scenario, and we are not going to invent one.

And there is a waiver, which the Department's answer does not mention. Sections 3.2.1 and 3.2.2 of the same regulation describe it. Read together they are careful rather than generous:

If a waiver of the Enrollment Rule is granted, the school that the student athlete wishes to represent determines whether to allow the student athlete to participate in an interscholastic tryout, practice, scrimmage, or contest as a representative of the school.

And on how one is filed:

A request for a waiver of the Enrollment Rule shall be approved by the Superintendent or the Head of School of the school that the student athlete wishes to represent before the request is submitted to DIAA.

So the sequence is superintendent first, DIAA second, the school's discretion third, and a granted waiver does not itself authorize participation. That is a narrow door, and the regulation's own list of situations that get past the enrollment rule without a waiver is instructive: students with disabilities placed by a district, students in the School District Enrollment Choice Program, military families under a permanent change of station order, and students experiencing homelessness under the McKinney-Vento Act. Homeschooled students appear on none of those lists. We read the regulation in full to say that.

We are telling you about the waiver anyway, and here is the honest reason. We do not know of a Delaware homeschooled student who has obtained one, we cannot promise the route works, and we would rather you not build a season around it. But a family that goes to its superintendent knowing the rule number, the correct regulation, the name of the mechanism and the order of the steps is having a different conversation than a family that has only been told no by a web page citing two regulations that do not contain the rule.

What the General Assembly did on July 23, 2026, and why it is the most useful thing on this page

On July 23, 2026 the Governor signed House Bill 350, enacted as 85 Del. Laws, c. 392, effective the day it was signed. It passed the House 38 to 0 with 3 absent and the Senate 20 to 0 with 1 absent. Its primary sponsor was Rep. Neal with Sen. Hocker, and it carried seven additional House co-sponsors and twenty Senate co-sponsors. Not one recorded vote against it in either chamber.

The act does not open a single gym door. What it does is order the Department of Education to answer the question, and put a date on the answer. Section 3:

By December 31, 2027, the Department shall submit its findings and recommendations to all of the following:

Findings on eleven specified subjects, beginning with the advisability of developing a pilot program regarding homeschool students' participation in extracurricular activities in those students' schools of residence or within a charter school or vocational-technical school, and running through feasibility, costs, impacts on public school students, grade-band distinctions between K-5, 6-8 and 9-12, and potential eligibility criteria a homeschool student would need to meet.

Three things in it are worth a Delaware family's attention.

First, the act tells you what the Legislature thinks the conditions should be. One of its recitals reads:

WHEREAS, homeschool integration into extracurricular activities should be contingent on there being available capacity in the public school and, if applicable, the same tryouts and proof of ability required of public school students; and

Capacity, and the same tryout as everyone else. That is a narrower frame than some states use, and it is the frame the Department has been handed.

Second, and this part exists only in the enrolled version, families were written into the room by amendment. The bill as introduced required the Department to collaborate with school districts, charter schools and vocational-technical school districts. House Amendment No. 1 changed that list. The act as signed reads:

The Department shall, in collaboration with school districts, charter schools, vocational-technical school districts, and representatives of the Delaware homeschooling community, including Tri-State Homeschool, Inc., Delaware First State Homeschool, and the MidAtlantic African American Homeschooling Cooperative, make findings and recommendations about all the following:

Three Delaware homeschool organizations, named in the text of an act of the General Assembly, as required collaborators in a study of your children's access. The bill's published synopsis does not mention the amendment, which is why every summary of this act you are likely to read describes the original version. If you want a say in what the Department reports in 2027, those three organizations are the addresses the statute gives you.

Third, the act quotes the number. Another recital records that as of October 2023, 4,466 Delaware students were homeschooled, according to the Department of Education's Nonpublic School Report. The Legislature took that figure from the very reports you generate every September. Your enrollment filing is not only compliance. It is the count that gets cited when the state argues about you.

One honest limit. The act expires on the date the Registrar of Regulations publishes notice that the Department has submitted its findings, and the bill's own synopsis explains that it was placed in the Laws of Delaware rather than in Title 14 precisely because it is temporary. A study is not a right. December 31, 2027 is a reporting deadline, not a start date for anything. But it is a real deadline that has not passed, attached to a unanimous act, with your community's organizations named in it, and that is a materially better position than most states' homeschoolers are in.

The member-school question nobody has asked out loud

Here is a gap we found by reading two documents that do not reference each other, and we are publishing it as a question rather than as an answer.

14 Del. C. § 303 requires the DIAA Board to write regulations covering, among other things, regulation of the interscholastic athletic program of each nonpublic school that elects to become a member school, and the manner in which a nonpublic school may elect to become a member school. The regulation that implements it is 14 DE Admin. Code 1024, DIAA Member Schools, and its section 3.1 reads:

Any middle and secondary school located within the boundaries of the State and containing grades 6 through 8, or 8 through 12, or any grouping of such grade levels, including nonpublic, private, and public schools, authorized by Title 14 of the Delaware Code, may become a full Member School of DIAA. Membership requires the payment of dues and a signed affirmation of the obligations of membership.

Now put that next to section 2703A(a), which says a Delaware homeschool is considered a nonpublic school, authorized by Title 14. On the face of the rule, a nonpublic school authorized by Title 14 and containing the right grade levels may elect membership. Section 3.2 adds an associate member category for a school that can show good cause why it cannot become a full member, with renewal applications due at the DIAA office by May 1 each year.

We are not telling you a Delaware multi-family homeschool can join DIAA. We do not know that, we found no instance of it, the obligations of membership are written for institutions with teams and administrative heads, and the question is exactly the kind of legal conclusion we have no business reaching on your behalf. What we will say is that it is live rather than theoretical, because House Bill 350's eleventh item of study is this:

Any potential to partner with nonpublic schools to incorporate homeschool students into extracurricular activities in nonpublic schools. The Department may seek feedback from nonpublic schools.

A homeschool is a nonpublic school. The Department has been ordered to study partnering with nonpublic schools. The membership rule is open on its face to nonpublic schools authorized by Title 14. If that thread is worth pulling, the offices to pull it with are the DIAA office and the three homeschool organizations the act names, and the thing to ask for is an answer in writing.

And if your child does end up eligible somewhere, read the academic rule first

This is the part that lands on a family with no warning, and it is worth knowing years early. DIAA's high school regulation sets the academic standard at section 2.3.2 of 1009:

In order to be eligible for participation in interscholastic athletic contests and scrimmages, a student must pursue a regular course of study or its equivalent as approved by the local governing body, and must be passing at least 5 credits.

Two of those credits must be in the areas of English, Mathematics, Science, World Language, or Social Studies, and a twelfth grader must be passing everything necessary for graduation. Eligibility is forfeited or regained on the day marking period grades are issued or published, against a calendar the governing body of the school must establish before the start of the school year.

Every load-bearing word there presumes a record: a marking period, a published grade, a credit, a governing body that approved the course of study. In a Delaware homeschool you are the governing body, and Delaware never asked you to produce any of it. Keep that shape in mind, because the next section shows the same demand arriving through a door every teenager walks through.

Your teenager needs a report card to get a learner's permit

If you read one section of this page twice, make it this one. It reaches nearly every Delaware family with a child heading toward sixteen, and nothing in the homeschool statute warns you about it.

14 Del. C. § 4125 governs driver education certification. Subsection (a) says a driver education teacher may not certify that a student is qualified for either a Driver Education Learner's Permit or a Level 1 Learner's Permit unless the student has done three things: completed the classroom and behind-the-wheel components, demonstrated the required knowledge about traffic stops by a law-enforcement officer, and satisfied subsections (a)(2) and (a)(3). Those last two are the ones that matter to you.

Subsection (a)(2):

Was enrolled in tenth or a higher grade, on or before September 30 of the school year when the student was enrolled in the driver education course under paragraph (a)(1) of this section.

September 30 again, and notice which filing establishes what grade your child was enrolled in on that date. Your enrollment report is the record.

Subsection (a)(3)a:

Earned passing grades in at least 5 credits or their equivalent (credits) on the student's most recent, published report card (report card) as follows:

Then two conditions. All 5 credits must be in a regular course of study, or its equivalent as approved by the local governing body of the student's school. And at least 2 of the credits must be in English, mathematics, science, world language, or social studies.

Read those against the Department of Education's own position on report cards, quoted earlier on this page: the Department does not issue report cards for any nonpublic school, report cards come from the homeschool, and grading and promotion are determined by the homeschool's administrator, who is you. Delaware requires you to issue exactly zero grades in twelve years, and then makes a published report card the precondition of your sixteen year old's learner's permit.

There is one relief valve and it presumes the same machinery. Subsection (e):

If a student has successfully completed the driver education course but does not meet the certification requirements under this section, the student is eligible for certification under § 2710 of Title 21 if the student meets the requirements under this section during the next marking period.

A next marking period. A homeschool that has never had a first one cannot have a next one.

What to do, and when. Begin issuing a real report card at the start of ninth grade at the latest, on a marking period calendar you write down before the year starts, with named courses carrying credit values and letter or percentage grades. Keep the published copies. This is not a suggestion about rigour; it is the literal document three separate Delaware authorities ask for, and unlike a portfolio it cannot be assembled after the fact, because what the statute asks for is the most recent, published one.

One live wrinkle worth knowing. Senate Bill 246 of the 153rd General Assembly, enacted as 85 Del. Laws, c. 270, signed May 21, 2026 and effective August 1, 2026, added world language to the list of qualifying academic subjects and added a new sentence to the statute:

The Department of Education shall establish, through regulations, how the number of credits required under paragraph (a)(3)a. of this section is calculated, including how equivalent credit is determined and calculated.

The act's synopsis explains why: many high schools have moved from a seven-period day to block scheduling, and the credit arithmetic needed a rule. As of the date of this page, the Department's driver education regulation, 14 DE Admin. Code 540, carries a published amendment history ending at 16 DE Reg. 1070, dated April 1, 2013, and contains no credit-calculation provision. A regulation can be adopted before it appears in a printed code, so treat that as a dated observation rather than a finding about anybody. Treat it also as a reason to watch: whatever rule the Department writes about equivalent credit is the rule that will decide how a homeschool's own course structure converts, and that is a rulemaking a homeschooling family has a genuine interest in.

The free driver education nobody tells homeschoolers about

Same regulation, and this one is money. Section 1.1 of 14 DE Admin. Code 540:

A student enrolled in a Delaware public school or nonpublic school (private and homeschool) and who is a resident of Delaware is entitled to free driver education one time only.

Homeschool, in the regulation's own parenthesis. The course itself is defined in section 2.1: a minimum of forty four class hours, made up of thirty hours of classroom instruction, seven hours of behind the wheel laboratory instruction and seven hours of in-car observation, with class hours no shorter than forty five minutes. Students who are not successful the first time may register in an adult driver education program for a fee, and section 1.3 opens a free summer route for several categories of student, subject to approval by the Secretary of Education.

The Department's FAQ gives the practical version: a student enrolled in a Delaware homeschool who is a Delaware resident is entitled to one free driver education course through an adult education program under Regulation 540, some locations charge a nominal registration fee, and the parent brings two documents to the program, the acknowledgement page printed from EdAccess and a copy of the student's recent report card. The FAQ cites the academic eligibility statute with a small typographical slip in the title number, and the section it means is the one quoted above.

Two documents. One of them you print in ten seconds. The other one you have to have been making all along.

College credit in high school: closed in the regulation, open at the college's own counter

Delaware's dual enrollment framework is built entirely out of duties on school districts, and the word homeschool does not appear in it. 14 DE Admin. Code 506, Policies for Dual Enrollment and Awarding Dual Credit, defines dual enrollment as simultaneous enrollment in both a high school and an accredited postsecondary institution, and then requires school districts and secondary charter schools to develop policies meeting eleven criteria. Every one of those criteria runs to a district: the articulation agreement is between the accredited postsecondary institution and school district, school or charter school; funding sources must be identified along with the procedures for applying; and dual credit requires prior approval by the principal or the principal's designee of the high school in which the credit is to be awarded.

There is no exclusionary clause aimed at your child anywhere in it. There does not need to be. A regulation whose every sentence commands a school district is closed to a family that has no district, and the generous sentence in it, that no student shall be denied access to dual credit or dual enrollment courses because of the student's or family's inability to pay, is a promise districts make to their own students.

The open door is at the college, and Delaware Tech says so in one sentence. From Delaware Technical Community College's own Visiting High School Students page:

High school and home schooled students may enroll in Delaware Tech courses with permission from their parents. In order to assure high school students are prepared to succeed at the college level, students must provide evidence of college readiness through the means approved by Delaware Tech prior to registration.

Note where that sentence lives. It is not on the dual enrollment eligibility page, which is written for students coming through a district partnership; it is on the visiting student page, one level over. This is the single most common shape in American homeschool law: the page written for the majority applicant says nothing about you, and the door for your child is on a different page.

The process Delaware Tech publishes has five steps, and the useful part is that it starts with a named human. The college lists an academic counselor for each campus, Dover, Georgetown, Stanton and Wilmington, each with a name, an email address and a direct phone number. You apply through the online application choosing the select only courses campus application type and visiting high school student as the choice of study, demonstrate readiness using any one measure from the college's multiple measures list, meet with a counselor to complete a registration form, and then pay the bill and buy your materials.

That last clause is the honest cost. A visiting high school student pays tuition. The free version of dual credit in Delaware is the district version, and the district version is built out of articulation agreements your family is not party to. What you are buying is real college credit on a real transcript at a real Delaware institution, at a price, without needing anyone's permission but your own and the college's.

The University of Delaware and Delaware State University run their own early college arrangements as well; if a four year campus is closer or a better fit, ask their admissions offices the same question the Delaware Tech page answers, and ask in writing.

The money: three state scholarships that name home schooled students in the statute

This is the section that pays for reading the whole page. The Department of Education's FAQ contains this sentence, and read casually it sounds like a door closing:

While students of a certain age are not required to be enrolled in homeschools, students do need to be registered in a public or non-public school at the time of graduation to take advantage of state programs like SEED and INSPIRE scholarships.

Read it again with section 2703A(a) in hand. A registered Delaware homeschool is a registered nonpublic school. The Department is not telling you that you are excluded. It is telling you that your registration is the thing that makes these scholarships reachable, which makes that annual September filing a great deal more than paperwork.

And the statutes go further than that. All three of Delaware's major state scholarship programs name home schooled students by hand and order the institution to build a standard for them.

SEED: full tuition at Delaware Tech or UD's associate programs

The Delaware Student Excellence Equals Degree program, at 14 Del. C. subchapter XIV of chapter 34, relieves qualified state resident students of undergraduate tuition at Delaware Technical and Community College or the University of Delaware's Associate in Arts Program. The eligibility section, § 3404A(a)(4), opens with this:

A student shall have graduated from a Delaware public or nonpublic high school or have earned the Delaware State Board of Education Endorsement Secondary Credential.

And then subsection (a)(7) removes any remaining doubt:

Each institution shall create and implement its own equivalency standards for paragraph (a)(4) of this section in establishing eligibility of Delaware home schooled students for grants under the SEED program.

The associate degree track also requires a cumulative average of either 80% or higher on a 100 point scale or a grade point average of 2.5 or higher on a 4.0 scale as indicated on the student's official high school transcript, with a statutory conversion table for transcripts that use letter grades. Students may participate for up to 10 continuous semesters, and a student who completes an associate degree with semesters left may carry SEED into a bachelor's junior year.

Inspire: four years of tuition at Delaware State University

The Delaware State Inspire Scholarship Act, at 14 Del. C. subchapter XV of chapter 34, pays undergraduate tuition at DSU. Its eligibility section requires graduation from a Delaware public or nonpublic high school with a cumulative average of 80% or higher on a 100-point scale or a grade point average of 2.75 or higher on a 4.0 scale as indicated on the official high school transcript, and separately requires that the student be admitted and attend classes at the institution no later than the fall semester immediately after the student's graduation from high school. Then:

The institution shall create and implement its own equivalency standards for paragraphs (a)(4) and (6) of this section in establishing eligibility of Delaware home schooled students for grants under the Inspire Scholarship Program.

Look at which paragraphs that sentence covers. Not just the transcript one. Also the one about enrolling in the fall immediately after graduation, which for a homeschooling family is a question about a date the parent chooses. The Legislature saw that and handed it to the institution to resolve.

Delaware Advance: for students with intellectual disabilities

The Delaware Advance Scholarship Act, at 14 Del. C. subchapter XVI of chapter 34, funds credential-seeking enrollment at the University of Delaware for a student with an intellectual disability who is under 25. Its eligibility list includes having graduated from a public or nonpublic high school in this State with a certificate of completion or diploma as indicated on the student's official high school transcript, and being admitted and attending classes no later than 2 years after the student's completion of high school. And then subsection (b):

An institution shall create and implement its own equivalency standards for paragraphs (a)(7) and (a)(9) of this section in establishing eligibility of home-schooled students of this State for grants under this subchapter.

Now go read the standards the institutions actually wrote, because they differ

Three statutes order equivalency standards. Here is what we could and could not find published.

Delaware Technical Community College published one, and it has a second route. From the college's SEED Scholarship Information page:

The equivalency standards for Delaware home-schooled students shall be a complete home schooled academic transcript, or a combined score of 1350 on the new SAT or a composite ACT score of at least 19.

Its SEED FAQ spells out the operational version, including a detail nobody would guess:

Home-schooled students must provide a copy of their transcript showing a Delaware address for the home-school location. In the event a home-schooled student does not have a transcript, the student is required to provide proof of scoring at least a combined score of 1350 on the new SAT or a composite ACT score of at least 19.

A Delaware address on the transcript. That is a formatting requirement that costs nothing if you know it in advance and costs a resubmission cycle if you do not.

The University of Delaware published one, and it has no test alternative. From UD Student Financial Services' Flex Pathway Students page:

The equivalency standards for Delaware home-schooled students shall be a complete home-schooled academic transcript.

Same first clause as Delaware Tech, and the SAT and ACT route is simply not there. The same page adds that UD cannot pay the SEED Scholarship to the student account until it has received the student's final high school transcript, that UD reviews the final high school transcripts for all students offered SEED Scholarships, typically during the summer, and that students must have an overall high school GPA of 2.5 or higher upon graduation as reflected on the final transcript.

For Delaware State University and the Inspire Scholarship, we could not find a published equivalency standard. DSU's Inspire Scholarship page says a student must graduate from a Delaware high school, adds that you must receive a diploma from an in-state school, and asks for an official high school transcript and ACT or SAT test scores. The word homeschool does not appear on it. That is not evidence the standard does not exist; a standard can live in an internal financial aid procedure that never gets a public page. It does mean a homeschooling family cannot look the answer up, and the statute plainly contemplates one existing.

So the move, and it is the same move every time an institution owes you a standard you cannot read: write to the office that administers the scholarship, name the statutory subsection, ask what the institution's published equivalency standard is and what documents satisfy it, and keep the reply. Ask in your child's tenth grade year, not in the spring of twelfth, because every version of the answer we can read asks for something cumulative.

The common thread, and it is the thing to act on. Two institutions published their standards and both ask for a complete home schooled academic transcript. A transcript is not a document you write; it is arithmetic over grades that already existed while the work was happening. Delaware Tech's SAT or ACT alternative is a genuine escape hatch and UD's page does not offer one. Combine that with the driver's licence rule earlier on this page and the picture is simple: the state of Delaware asks a homeschooling parent for no grades, and at least four Delaware institutions ask for grades that were issued years before anybody mentioned it.

529 money, and the Delaware deduction that excludes K-12 by name

You have probably read this year that 529 money now covers homeschool expenses. Be careful with that sentence, because it has two halves and only one of them is settled.

The expense list is real and it is generous. 26 U.S.C. § 529(c)(7) extends the term qualified higher education expense to tuition, curriculum and curricular materials, books or other instructional materials, online educational materials, tuition for tutoring or educational classes outside of the home by an unrelated licensed teacher or subject matter expert, fees for a nationally standardized norm-referenced achievement test and for college admission examinations, fees for dual enrollment in an institution of higher education, and educational therapies for students with disabilities. That reads like a homeschooling family's shopping list because it was written to.

The scoping sentence governing all of it is the whole question. Every one of those expenses must be

in connection with enrollment or attendance at, or for students enrolled at or attending, an elementary or secondary public, private, or religious school

We read all of section 529 and all of section 530. The word homeschool appears in neither one, not once. What section 530(b)(3)(B) does is define a school as

any school which provides elementary education or secondary education (kindergarten through grade 12), as determined under State law

As determined under State law. Which puts the question back on Delaware, and Delaware's answer to what a homeschool is happens to be unusually direct: section 2703A(a) says it is considered a nonpublic school.

We are not going to tell you what follows from that, and we want to be explicit about why. We sell a monthly teaching service to homeschooling families. A confident answer from a company that profits from the answer is worth nothing. What we will do is hand you the two provisions that decide it, tell you they point somewhere interesting, and tell you to ask the Delaware Division of Revenue and your own tax preparer in writing, for your filing year, and keep the reply.

What we can tell you flatly is about the Delaware deduction, because it is not ambiguous at all. 30 Del. C. § 1106(b)(11) allows a Delaware subtraction of up to $1,000 for contributions to a DE529 Education Savings Plan account, or up to $2,000 for spouses filing jointly, and it disappears entirely above $100,000 of federal adjusted gross income for individual filers and $200,000 for joint filers. Then it carves out the thing you were about to do:

no deduction shall be permitted under this section for any amount contributed during the taxable year to an account in a Delaware sponsored tuition program for expenses intended or used for tuition in connection with enrollment or attendance at an elementary or secondary public, private, or religious school

Delaware's own deduction is a college deduction by statute. Money you put in and intend to spend on K-12 gets no Delaware subtraction, whatever the federal treatment turns out to be. That is a real planning fact and it runs in the opposite direction from the way the 529 story has been told this year.

The military question, which is federal, and which we will answer halfway

Education agencies in several states tell homeschooling families that the military will not accept their transcript. The answer is federal, the chain is three documents long, and it is worth having in writing.

Section 532 of Public Law 112-81, set out in the notes to 10 U.S.C. § 503 and titled Equal Treatment for Secondary School Graduates, requires that for the purposes of recruitment and enlistment in the Armed Forces, the Secretary of a military department treat a covered graduate in the same manner as a graduate of a secondary school. A covered graduate is a person who

receives a diploma from a secondary school that is legally operating

or who

otherwise completes a program of secondary education in compliance with the education laws of the State in which the person resides

Delaware homeschoolers can plausibly reach both prongs, and the first is the easier of the two here. A registered Delaware homeschool is a legally operating nonpublic school, and the Department of Education says in its own materials that the diploma will be issued by the nonpublic school. The second prong is satisfied by the same evidence this whole page has been telling you to keep: your Acknowledgement Letters and your filed enrollment and attendance reports are the documentary record of compliance with Delaware's education laws.

What the statute does not settle, and we will not pretend otherwise, is what a particular recruiting station accepts as proof on a particular Tuesday. That is a station-level determination and no document we found addresses it. Go to the recruiter early, ask what they need, and get the list in writing before your child's senior year rather than after.

What Delaware does not have, so you can stop looking

Several things a homeschooling family in a neighbouring state would go looking for do not exist here, and a stated no saves a month.

Small things Delaware families ask

What this actually means for your week

Delaware's deal is one of the cleanest in the country. Register once, file twice a year, teach whatever you think is right. If your child is seven and you have no interest in district programs, you could satisfy Delaware law for the next nine years with two logins a year and a tally of days on the refrigerator.

Then look at what every other section of this page has in common, because it is one pattern rather than nine.

Every one of those wants the same two things: a filing made on time, and a written record of what was actually taught and how it went. Delaware has removed almost every reason to keep one for compliance and left every reason to want one as evidence. That is the specific trap of a light-regulation state, and nothing on your calendar reminds you, because the state that would have reminded you is the state that decided not to ask.

That is what we built. Mrs. M teaches your child the four core subjects one on one, at their level, and keeps a record of every session as a byproduct of doing it: which subject, which lesson, what your child worked on, how they did. If you upload a curriculum you already bought, she teaches from its actual pages and the record says so. When Delaware Tech asks for a complete home schooled academic transcript, or a driver education program asks for a recent report card, or a district asks what the last two years looked like, the answer is already written down, because writing it down was never a separate job.

We do not promise your child will hit any particular mark, in Delaware or anywhere else. Nobody honest does. What we will say is that a state that asks for almost nothing is a gift, and the difference between a gift and a trap is whether anything got written down along the way.

This is general information for Delaware families researching homeschool law, current as of publication on September 18, 2026, and it is not legal, tax, special education or financial aid advice for your situation. Statutory text is quoted from the Delaware Code as published by the Delaware General Assembly, specifically 14 Del. C. sections 2701, 2702, 2703, 2703A, 2704 and 2705; 14 Del. C. section 303; 14 Del. C. section 4125; 14 Del. C. subchapters XIV, XV and XVI of chapter 34; 14 Del. C. chapters 4 and 35; and 30 Del. C. section 1106, all read on September 18, 2026. The Delaware Code online carries no currency notice, so we tested it rather than trusting it: 14 Del. C. section 4125 carries a source note for 85 Del. Laws, c. 270, an act signed May 21, 2026, which establishes that the published code reflects at least that far into the 153rd General Assembly. Session material is quoted from the engrossed text of House Bill 350 of the 153rd General Assembly as amended by House Amendment No. 1, enacted as 85 Del. Laws, c. 392, signed and effective July 23, 2026; from the status record and synopsis of Senate Bill 246 of the 153rd General Assembly, enacted as 85 Del. Laws, c. 270; and from the chaptered text of 83 Del. Laws, c. 87, formerly Senate Bill 106, approved July 29, 2021. Vote tallies, chapter numbers, effective dates and bill dispositions are taken from the General Assembly's own legislation service, and the complete measure lists for the 153rd and 152nd General Assemblies, 1,961 and 1,783 measures respectively, were pulled from that service on September 18, 2026 and searched in full. Administrative rules are quoted from the Delaware Administrative Code as published by the Registrar of Regulations, specifically 14 DE Admin. Code 506, 540, 1008, 1009, 1024 and 1028, each downloaded as the Registrar's own authenticated PDF on September 18, 2026. Department of Education material is quoted from its Homeschools and Private Schools page, its Register for a Nonpublic School page, its Annual Reporting and Data page, its nonpublic schools FAQ page, and its Nonpublic Schools Information Packet dated July 10, 2023. Two of those pages, Register for a Nonpublic School and Annual Reporting and Data, refuse automated fetches from us and were read and verified in a real browser instead; we say so here because you are entitled to know how we read what we quote. College material is quoted from Delaware Technical Community College's SEED Scholarship Information page, its SEED FAQ page and its Visiting High School Students page; from the University of Delaware's Student Financial Services Flex Pathway page; and from Delaware State University's Inspire Scholarship page. Federal material is quoted from 26 U.S.C. sections 529 and 530 and from section 532 of Public Law 112-81 as set out in the notes to 10 U.S.C. section 503, all fetched from the Office of the Law Revision Counsel on September 18, 2026. Seven sourcing notes we owe you. First, section 2703A is quoted from the current published code rather than from the amending act, because an amending act interleaves struck and added text and a block quotation of it would misstate what is contiguous in the source. Second, we have not concluded that the Department of Education's registration page is wrong about compulsory attendance ending at 18; we have printed the statute, the Department's own conflicting packet, and the separate exit interview provision that explains the tension, and named the office to ask. Third, we have declined to say whether a Delaware homeschool may become a DIAA member school under 14 DE Admin. Code 1024, and have printed the rule, the statute it implements, and the study item that makes the question live. Fourth, we have declined to say whether a Delaware homeschool is a school for federal 529 or Coverdell purposes, because we profit from the answer, and have quoted the two federal provisions that decide it and named the Division of Revenue instead. Fifth, we could not find a published home schooled equivalency standard for the Inspire Scholarship at Delaware State University, and we have reported that as a failure of our search rather than as a finding that none exists. Sixth, we have not asserted that the Department of Education has failed to promulgate the equivalent-credit regulation required by 85 Del. Laws, c. 270; we have printed the statutory directive, the amendment history published on the face of 14 DE Admin. Code 540, and the date we checked. Seventh, on athletic eligibility we have relied on the text of 14 DE Admin. Code 1028 rather than on the Department's characterization of regulations 1008 and 1009, having read all three in full. Statutes, administrative rules, agency web pages, scholarship terms, college procedures and appropriations all change, and they do not change together. Confirm anything you are relying on with the office that administers it, and consult an attorney about your own circumstances.

Curious how this works day to day when there is no state curriculum to follow? Here's the honest guide to teaching your own curriculum with us, written for every out-of-state family, Delaware included. Since almost everything on this page eventually asks you for a record Delaware never required, homeschool record keeping is the natural next read. And if the reason you are here is a child who was struggling in a classroom, start with homeschooling with an IEP or a learning difference. Or see the requirements for every other state.

See where your child stands first, free

Delaware will never test your child, never ask for a portfolio and never tell you how they are actually doing. That is freedom, and it is also a blank page. The free placement assessment fills in the first line of it: it feels like a friendly chat, never a test, it takes about fifteen minutes, and it works the same in Delaware as anywhere else. No card.

Start with the free assessment
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