Georgia Homeschool Requirements: The September 1 Form, and the Two Records Nobody Tells You to Keep

Georgia is a middle of the road state, and middle of the road states are the easy ones to get quietly wrong. There is no evaluator to satisfy, no portfolio to submit, and no district official reviewing anything you do. There is one form, an easy one, that everybody files. And then there are three ongoing obligations written into the same statute that produce no reminder, no notice, and no consequence until the day something goes sideways: attendance, an annual progress report, and a standardized test every three years. All three live in your filing cabinet and nowhere else. Here is the whole shape of it, taken from O.C.G.A. 20-2-690, the Georgia Department of Education's own home study materials, and HSLDA's Georgia guidance.

The short version

• Compulsory attendance runs from a child's sixth birthday to their sixteenth, under O.C.G.A. 20-2-690.1.
• File a Declaration of Intent with the Georgia Department of Education within 30 days of starting, and then every year by September 1. This one is annual, unlike Florida's.
• The teaching parent or guardian must hold a high school diploma or a GED. Same for any tutor you bring in. That is the entire credential requirement.
• Teach a basic educational program including, at minimum, reading, language arts, mathematics, social studies, and science.
• 180 days a year, at least four and a half hours a day. Georgia is one of the states that puts real numbers in the statute.
• Write an annual progress report in each required subject, and keep it three years.
• Standardized test at least every three years, beginning at the end of third grade. You keep the scores. You do not send them anywhere.
• Nothing above is submitted to anyone except the declaration. No approval, no review, no visit.

Step 1: the Declaration of Intent

You submit it to the Georgia Department of Education, not to your local school district, through the state's online home study portal. GaDOE then makes your declaration available to the school system where your program is located, which is how the local district learns your child is accounted for. You do not have to notify the district separately.

The declaration asks for:

• The names and ages of the students in the home study program
• The address where the program is located
• The local school system the program sits in
• A statement of the 12 month period that will count as your school year

That last item is quietly useful and most families breeze past it. You are declaring your own school year. It does not have to run August to May. If your family's life works better on a July to June calendar, or you are starting in January, you say so on the form and that becomes your year for the 180 day count.

Two timing traps

Starting mid year: the 30 day clock runs from when you establish the program, not from September. Pull your child out in October and you file in October.

Every year after: the deadline is September 1, and it is easy to forget precisely because the first year's filing felt like a one time event. It is not. Georgia wants a fresh declaration annually for as long as you are homeschooling. Put it on a recurring calendar reminder the day you file the first one.

Step 2: the parts that live in your house

This is the section worth reading twice, because none of it generates a reminder.

180 days, four and a half hours

The statute asks for 180 days of education in your declared 12 month year, with each school day consisting of at least four and a half school hours. Two honest notes about that number. First, four and a half hours is a ceiling on what anybody expects, not a floor you have to fill with worksheets: read-alouds, a science documentary you actually discuss, a museum morning, and a math lesson are school. Second, the reason the count matters is not that an inspector is coming. It is that "180 days" is meaningless in June if nobody wrote down the days as they happened.

The annual progress report, kept three years

At the end of each school year you write a progress report for each of the required subjects, assessing how your child did. You keep it for at least three years. You do not submit it.

This is the requirement Georgia families most commonly discover late, usually in a forum thread, usually a couple of years in. It is not hard. It is a page. It is also the single most useful document you will produce, because three years of them lined up is the closest thing a Georgia homeschooler has to a transcript, and it is exactly what a private school registrar or a district counselor asks for when a child transfers in.

The test, every three years, starting at the end of third grade

Your child takes a nationally standardized achievement test at least once every three years, beginning at the end of third grade. So in practice: third grade, sixth, ninth, twelfth, at minimum.

You choose the test. You arrange it. You keep the results and you do not send them to the state, the district, or anyone else. Georgia does not set a passing score, because there is nobody reading it to pass or fail you.

Which raises the obvious question, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a shrug: if nobody reads it, why do it? Two reasons. It is the law, which is reason enough. And it is the only outside look at your child that Georgia builds into the whole twelve years. Once every three years, something other than your own judgment tells you where they stand. Families who treat it as a chore get a number. Families who treat it as information get a plan.

What Georgia does not ask for

Worth naming plainly, because a lot of internet advice is describing other states:

• No curriculum approval and no book list. The five named subjects are a floor, and "including, but not limited to" is doing real work in that sentence. What you teach beyond them is yours.
• No portfolio submitted to anyone, ever.
• No teaching certificate. A high school diploma or GED is the whole bar.
• No home visits, no interviews, no district approval.
• No requirement that your test scores meet any particular level.

One thing Georgia does give you: home study students in grades 6 through 12 have a statutory path to participate in extracurricular and interscholastic activities at their resident school system, under the Dexter Mosely Act at O.C.G.A. 20-2-319.6. There is a notice deadline 30 days before the semester and a course you have to take alongside it, and both are worked through further down this page.

The Promise Scholarship, and who it is actually for

Georgia's Promise Scholarship provides up to $6,500 per eligible student for 2026-27, paid in quarterly installments into an education savings account, and home study is an allowed use of the funds. That sounds like it answers every Georgia homeschool family's budget question.

For most of them, it does not, and the honest reason is the eligibility gate rather than the money. As the program is built, a student generally must have been enrolled in a Georgia public school for two consecutive semesters (rising kindergartners are the main exception) and reside in the attendance zone of a public school on the state's list of the lowest performing 25 percent, with household income at or under 400 percent of the federal poverty level at entry and a parent who has lived in Georgia at least a year.

Read together, that means: if you have already been homeschooling for more than a semester, this door is generally closed to you unless your child was previously enrolled at a qualifying public school. It is a program designed to move children out of specific struggling schools, not a homeschool grant.

We would rather tell you that in one paragraph than have you spend a week on an application you cannot win. If you are currently deciding whether to withdraw a child who is enrolled at a qualifying school, that is a different conversation and the program is worth a serious look before you file the declaration. Verify the current year's eligibility rules, income thresholds, and windows on the state's own program pages, because school choice programs are the fastest changing thing on this page.

What the public schools and the colleges owe your family

Georgia is one of the better states in the country on both of these questions, and the two answers are connected in a way we have not seen a single Georgia guide point out. Your child can play for the zoned public school. Your child can take college courses that the state pays for, books included. And the college course can be the thing that keeps your child eligible to play.

Sports, band, clubs and theater: the Dexter Mosely Act

Senate Bill 42 of the 2021 session, codified at O.C.G.A. 20-2-319.6 and known in its own text as the Dexter Mosely Act, opened public school extracurricular and interscholastic activities to home study students in grades 6 through 12. The Georgia Department of Education published guidance on it dated July 1, 2021, and that document is the plainest statement of the requirements you will find.

The statute is broader than "sports." Its definition of extracurricular activities gives examples: "intramural and interscholastic athletics; band, chorus, and other musical activities; drama and other theatrical activities; and clubs and organizations".

The teeth are in subsection (g), and almost nobody quotes it. Subsection (f) says a resident school, school system or athletic association "shall not deny a home study student the opportunity to try out and participate if selected" in any activity available at the resident school, provided the requirements are met. Then the Legislature aimed at the association rather than the school:

No public high school which receives funding under this article shall participate in, sponsor, or provide coaching staff for interscholastic activities which are conducted under the authority of, conducted under the rules of, or scheduled by any athletic association that does not deem eligible for participation a home study student who meets the requirements contained in subsection (c) of this Code section and is not ineligible under subsection (d) of this Code section.

In plain terms: an athletic association that shut your child out would cost every public high school in Georgia the ability to play under its rules. That is why the Georgia High School Association has a form for you rather than an argument. Its 2026-2027 By-Law 100 says that "In compliance with the Dexter Mosley Act, schools must file eligibility for home study students and students enrolled in qualifying virtual schools using Transfer Eligibility Form", and then names the form, HS, and says it is on the GHSA web site. The association spells the Act "Mosley" and the statute spells it "Mosely", so search both if a form is hard to find.

Here is what you owe, and the first item is a deadline that will sneak up on you. All six requirements come from subsection (c) of the statute and the Department's guidance:

• Written notice, at least 30 calendar days before the first school day of the semester. It goes to two people, not one: "the principal of the resident school and the superintendent of the resident school system". For a fall sport that is a July task. The statute counts calendar days, so a late-July notice for an early-August start is already too late.
• Your most recent annual progress assessment report, the one 20-2-690 already makes you write, plus "written verification by the home study program instructor that the home study student is currently receiving a passing grade in each home study program course, is maintaining satisfactory progress toward advancement, and meets the requirements for participation". You are the instructor. You write the verification. Keep the progress report in a form you would be willing to hand to a principal, because now you will be.
• One qualifying course per semester. This is the price of admission, and it is the thing families do not budget for. For each semester of the regular school year during any part of which your child participates, your child "enrolls in and attempts to complete one qualifying course".
• Ordinary rules apply: age, academic, behavioral, conduct, disciplinary, residence and zoning requirements applicable to all students, the same student code of conduct and transportation policies, the tryout process, and selection where the activity is competitive. The Act guarantees the tryout. It does not guarantee the roster spot, and the Department says so.

Two traps worth naming. Subsection (e) defines participation far more broadly than game day: it includes "tryouts; off-season practice, rehearsal, or conditioning; summer and holiday practice, rehearsal, or conditioning; in-season practice, rehearsal, or conditioning; and all exhibitions, contests, and competitions". Summer conditioning in July counts, which means the qualifying course clock and the notice clock start earlier than a family reading only about the season would think. And subsection (d) is the withdrawal penalty: a student who leaves public school to home study "shall be ineligible for participation in any extracurricular or interscholastic activity for 12 months from the date of the declaration of intent", measured from the Declaration of Intent you filed with the Department. Your DOI date is now an athletic date. Write it down.

One more GHSA rule that catches homeschooling families specifically. By-Law 1.52 says that "Summer school credits earned in non-accredited home study programs or non-accredited private schools may not be used to gain eligibility", and names the accreditation it will accept: the Georgia Accrediting Commission, a regional agency such as SACS, or the Georgia Private School Accreditation Council. If you were planning to fix an eligibility problem with summer work in your own program, that path is closed. Plan the school year instead.

And a note on who answers what. The Department's guidance says in its own words that GaDOE "does not have oversight or monitoring authority over extracurricular or interscholastic activities," and routes those questions to the GHSA, the local board of education, or the governing authority for the activity. The Department's territory is the qualifying course and its academic effect. Send each question to the right desk and you will get answers faster.

The quiet part, and it is in your favor: subsection (i) has the resident school system count your child "for a one-sixth segment of the school day, or the block scheduling equivalent" in the reports it makes to the Department under 20-2-160. The district is paid something for including your child. If you ever hear that this is a burden on the school, that is the sentence to know about.

Dual enrollment: Georgia treats your home study program as the high school, and pays

This is one of the most generous arrangements in the country for a homeschooling family, and it is written into the program's own rules rather than left to a college's goodwill. The 2026-2027 Dual Enrollment Program Regulations published by the Georgia Student Finance Commission open by describing the program as providing "for participation in Dual Credit Enrollment for Georgia Eligible High School and Home Study students", and then define the term so that you are one:

An Eligible High School is any private or public secondary educational institution physically within the State of Georgia and any Home Study program operated pursuant to O.C.G.A. 20-2-690 and completes the program participation agreement.

Read the end of that sentence twice, because it is the step families miss. Your home study program is an Eligible High School once it signs the Dual Enrollment Participation Agreement with the Commission. That is the door. Until you sign it, the funding does not attach to your child no matter how ready the college is.

What the money actually covers. The regulations require the college to "adhere to the annually published rates to be paid for Tuition, Mandatory Fees and required books", and then to "accept the award amount as full payment of Tuition, Mandatory Fees and required book costs" up to the per-term limit. The college also "agrees to waive all mandatory and non-course related fees" for participating students and to provide the required course books. Tuition, fees and the books.

The limits, all from the same regulations:

• Grades 10, 11 and 12. Eleventh and twelfth graders may take any approved dual enrollment course at a participating public or private institution. A tenth grader is limited to career, technical and agricultural education courses at a Technical College System of Georgia institution, unless the student has "a minimum SAT score of 1200 or minimum ACT composite score of 26 in a single national test administration, taken prior to the term of enrollment", in which case the whole catalog opens.
• A 30 semester hour funding cap, with a 15 semester hour per term limit. That is a year of college, paid for, spread across three years of high school if you want it that way.
• Two withdrawals and you are done. A student "becomes ineligible to continue receiving Dual Enrollment program funding after his or her second (2nd) course withdrawal". A withdrawn lab and its lecture in the same term count as one. This is the rule to explain to a sixteen year old before the first drop deadline, not after the second.
• No funded retakes, and the student must be under 22 on the term start date.
• Course types are limited to approved core academic courses in English, math, science, social sciences and world languages, or CTAE career pathway courses, from the Dual Enrollment Course Directory.

What you sign up to do as the high school is short and worth knowing before you sign: provide counseling before enrollment, obtain your own consent as parent for each academic year's courses, inform yourself and your student of the funding cap, record each course name, grade and credit on the transcript using the conversion table in the regulations (three to five semester hours equals one course unit), and agree to accept the college credit toward your home study completion requirements. That last one is a promise you are making to your own child, and it is the reason to decide in ninth grade how these courses will sit on the transcript you will eventually issue.

And now the connection nobody makes. Go back to the Dexter Mosely Act's definition of a qualifying course, the one your child must take each semester to stay eligible for sports. Subsection (b)(5) lists three ways a course qualifies, and the second is: subparagraph (B), "By way of a dual credit course as provided for in Code Section 20-2-161.3". The Department's own guidance repeats it.

So the course that keeps your child on the team can be a college course that the state pays for, books included. One decision, made in the spring, satisfies the athletic requirement and banks college credit at the same time. Confirm the mechanics with your resident school system and your Eligible Postsecondary Institution in writing before you rely on it, because the two programs are administered by different agencies and the school has to record the enrollment on its side. But the sentence is in the statute, and it is worth the phone call.

The honest part

Georgia's law is reasonable and its enforcement is essentially nonexistent. There is no evaluator, no portfolio review, no district contact after the declaration. For a family that is on top of things, this is close to ideal.

The catch is structural. Georgia asks you to produce three kinds of evidence and then never asks to see any of them. That is a design that quietly rewards the organized and quietly penalizes everyone else, and it does the penalizing years later, at the worst possible moment: a transfer into private school, a district asking to place a returning ninth grader, a scholarship application, a custody discussion. That is when three years of progress reports and a test score either exist or do not.

And there is the deeper version of the same gap. Once every three years is a long time to go without anything outside your own house telling you where your child actually stands. Nobody is going to send you a letter in June saying your daughter reads a year and a half above grade or that your son never got solid on fractions. Between tests, the checking is entirely yours.

How an AI teacher fits into a state like this one

Start with what we are not. Kitchen Table School is not a registered school in Georgia or any other state. We do not file your declaration of intent, we are not your school system, we do not administer the standardized test, and we do not write your legal progress report for you. You are the parent on the paperwork, exactly as 20-2-690 intends.

What we do is the part that happens between September 1 and the next September 1. Before anything else, the teacher sits down with your child for a free placement conversation that feels like a friendly chat rather than a test, and tells you where they actually are in each subject, not where the grade label says they should be. From there your child gets a patient teacher working one on one at their real level, kindergarten through twelfth grade, on the curriculum you choose. Georgia families take the upload your own curriculum path: you pick the materials, the teacher reads them and teaches from their actual pages, paced across the 12 month school year you declared.

And every session writes itself down. The date, the subject, the book and unit, how long it ran, what your child worked on, and what they got solid on. Georgia asks you for 180 days, a yearly progress report in each subject, and three years of retention. Those are not things you should be reconstructing from memory in May: an attendance register you can print, per skill evidence of what was actually learned in each subject, and a portfolio that keeps itself are exactly the raw material a Georgia progress report is written from.

Nobody is going to ask you for it. Georgia built it that way. You will still be very glad it exists the one time somebody does.

Curious how this works day to day once the declaration is filed? Here's the honest guide to teaching your own curriculum with us, written for every out-of-state family, Georgia included. Or see the requirements for every other state.