Missouri Homeschool Requirements: 1,000 Hours, and a Log That Is Literally a Legal Defense

Missouri looks at first like a no-notice, low-regulation state, and in one sense it is: you do not register, you do not file, and no official reviews your program. But Missouri's law is doing something more interesting than absence. It names the records you keep, states the hours you owe, and then says out loud what almost every other state leaves unwritten, which is exactly what those records are for and who is allowed to review them. It also, in the last two years, quietly grew a second legal category of homeschool that most families have never heard of, and opened the door to public school sports. Everything below comes from the Revised Statutes of Missouri themselves, at the sections currently in effect.

The short version

• No notice. No registration. No approval. No curriculum submission. No testing. Missouri does not require you to tell anyone.
• Compulsory attendance runs from age 7 to "the compulsory attendance age for the district", which is 17, or earlier upon successfully completing 16 credits toward graduation. RSMo 167.031.
• For homeschool purposes, a completed credit is 100 hours or more of instruction in a course. That definition is written into the statute, and it is more useful than it looks.
• 1,000 hours of instruction a year, of which at least 600 hours are in reading, language arts, mathematics, social studies, science, or related academic courses, and at least 400 of those 600 happen at the regular home school location. RSMo 167.012.
• Keep three things: a plan book, diary, or other written record of subjects taught and activities engaged in; a portfolio of samples of the child's work; and a record of evaluations of academic progress. Or credible equivalent evidence.
• The hour and record requirements do not apply to a pupil 16 or older.
• A school year runs July 1 through June 30.
• There are now two legal categories: a "home school" and an "FPE school." The academic requirements are identical. The difference is scholarship money.
• Since August 28, 2025, public school sports and fine arts activities are open to homeschooled students in their district of residence, with conditions. RSMo 167.790.
• Your daily log is a statutory defense against prosecution and against an educational neglect charge, and your records are reviewable only by the local prosecuting attorney.

Step 1: there is no step 1, but there is one letter worth writing

Missouri requires no notice of intent, no registration, and no approval from anybody. You are not on a list. The state does not know your child exists as a homeschooler and has built no mechanism to find out.

One thing is worth doing anyway. If your child is currently enrolled in a public school, RSMo 167.042 gives you a clean exit: if a parent makes written notification of intent to pursue other educational options and requests that the child be dropped from the district's rolls, the school "shall comply with the request and remove said child from the rolls promptly."

Note what that statute does. It is not a permission slip; the district has no discretion. It is a switch you throw, in writing, and the language is mandatory. Write it, date it, deliver it, keep a copy. A child who simply stops attending is an attendance problem for a building that has no way of knowing otherwise, and that is a phone call you never need to receive.

Step 2: the 1,000 hours, and the 400 that have to happen at home

This is the most specific requirement in Missouri law and the one families most often misunderstand, usually by making it harder than it is.

The structure is three nested numbers:

• 1,000 hours of instruction total across the school year.
• At least 600 of those in reading, language arts, mathematics, social studies, science, "or academic courses that are related to such subject areas and consonant with the child's age and ability."
• At least 400 of those 600 at the regular home school location.

Work through what that actually permits, because the remainder is where families find their year is easier than they feared. 400 hours are pinned to your location. The other 600 are not. Co-op days, a class at a museum, a lab at a friend's kitchen table, music lessons, a job shadow, hours in the car with an audiobook that is genuinely part of the literature course: all of it can count, subject to the ordinary requirement that it is instruction and you can describe it.

Two more details worth having:

The location is one you designate, and it does not have to be a house. Missouri families who travel have long designated an RV, and the statute's language is "the regular home school location", not a property address on file somewhere.

None of this applies to a pupil 16 or older. Subsection 3 of both record-keeping statutes says so plainly. A sixteen year old's homeschool is not subject to the 1,000 hours or the record requirements, which is a substantial and little-known relief for families schooling through the last two years of high school.

And connect that back to compulsory attendance. A Missouri student is bound until 17, or until they have successfully completed 16 credits toward high school graduation. For a homeschool, the statute defines a completed credit as 100 hours or more of instruction in a course. Sixteen credits is 1,600 hours of coursework, documented by course. That is not a shortcut anyone should chase for its own sake, but it means your hour log by course is doing more work than tracking compliance. It is also the record that answers the question of when compulsory attendance ends for your family.

Step 3: the three records, and the sentence that explains them

Missouri names what you keep. Either the three specific items, or, in the statute's own words, "Other written or credible evidence equivalent to subparagraphs a. to c. of paragraph (a) of this subdivision":

• A plan book, diary, or other written record indicating subjects taught and activities engaged in.
• A portfolio of samples of the child's academic work.
• A record of evaluations of the child's academic progress.

Nobody collects these. There is no submission date, no reviewer, and no office. Which naturally raises the question every Missouri parent eventually asks, usually in year two when the plan book has gone quiet: what are these actually for?

Missouri answers the question in the statute, and this is the thing worth knowing about this state.

The production of a daily log showing a course of instruction that satisfies these requirements "shall be a defense to any prosecution" under the compulsory attendance statute, and to any charge or action for educational neglect brought under chapter 210. And: homeschool records and enforcement "shall be subject to review only by the local prosecuting attorney."

Read that twice, because it reframes everything. Your records are not paperwork submitted to a bureaucracy that does not exist. They are a shield the legislature handed you, deliberately, and it named the only person entitled to look at them. No school administrator, no social worker, no district official, and no state agency is authorized to review your homeschool records in Missouri. One office is, and only in the context where the shield is the point.

The practical instruction that falls out of this is short. Keep the log because it is the defense, and keep it in a form somebody could actually read. A family that has kept a real dated log for three years is in an extraordinarily strong position if a complaint ever arrives from an unhappy relative, a neighbor, or a custody dispute. A family that intended to keep one is not.

Step 4: "home school" or "FPE school," and why Missouri made two

This is new, it is confusing, and almost no guide explains it, so here it is plainly.

Missouri law now defines two categories that are academically identical:

• A home school under RSMo 167.012.
• A Family Paced Education (FPE) school, under RSMo 167.013.

Compare the two statutes side by side and the academic requirements are word for word the same: the same 1,000 hours, the same 600 core, the same 400 at the regular location, the same plan book and portfolio and evaluations, the same exemption at 16, the same daily log defense, the same review only by the local prosecuting attorney. Both enroll children between age 7 and the compulsory attendance age, no more than four of them unrelated, and neither may charge tuition.

The difference is one clause, and it is about money. A "home school" may not enroll children who participate in Missouri's scholarship program established at RSMo sections 135.712 to 135.719 and 166.700 to 166.720, and is by definition not an FPE school. An FPE school may enroll those children.

So the two names describe the same school year with one variable changed: whether a child in it is taking state scholarship money. If you take the money, the law calls your school an FPE school. If you do not, it calls it a home school. Nothing about your teaching, your hours, or your records changes.

Why this matters in practice, even though it changes nothing academically:

• Read your own definitions before you apply for scholarship funds, because accepting them moves you between two statutory categories, and forms, providers, and future legislation may treat those categories differently even where the current requirements are identical.
• When you read Missouri statutes, watch for which term is used. A law that says "home school" and not "FPE school" does not cover a family taking scholarship money, and vice versa. The sports law discussed below deliberately names both, which is exactly the drafting care you want to check for.
• Scholarship program rules are outside the scope of this page and change frequently. Verify eligibility, amounts, and obligations with the program administrator directly, not with a guide.

Step 5: the gym doors opened in 2025

Effective August 28, 2025, Missouri enacted RSMo 167.790, and it is a genuinely significant change for homeschooling families who have watched from the stands for years.

A school district or charter school may not prohibit a student receiving instruction at a home school, an FPE school, or as a full-time equivalent virtual student from participating, contingent on a tryout where one applies, in any event or activity offered by the district or charter school where the student resides. "Event or activity" covers athletics, fine arts activities including dance, theater, vocal music, performance of music and visual arts, and integrated cocurricular activities.

And critically: the district may not require the student to attend any class, or to attend the public school for any portion of the school day, in order to participate. That is the provision that distinguishes Missouri's law from the several states where "access" means enrolling part time.

The conditions, all of which are reasonable and all of which you should know going in:

• Proof of residency in the district or attendance center where you seek to participate.
• A physical to participate in sports, including detail on relevant underlying conditions.
• The same behavior, responsibility, performance and code of conduct standards as enrolled students, and the same financial requirements, meaning you pay the same fees.
• Districts may set disciplinary and attendance policies for required practices, rehearsals and coursework, but must apply them identically to everyone and may not create a separate policy for homeschooled or FPE students.
• Some fine arts, career and technical, and integrated cocurricular activities have instruction that genuinely happens during the school day, and districts may still require participation in those components.
• The parent providing primary instruction is responsible for oversight of the academic standards relating to the student's participation. Your district does not check your child's grades; you certify them.

One rule to plan around, and it is the one that bites. A student whose academic performance or disciplinary status would have made them ineligible to participate at their public school, who then disenrolls to homeschool, is ineligible to participate in that district's activities for twelve calendar months from the date of disenrollment. The legislature closed the obvious loophole. If eligibility is currently an issue for your child, withdrawing does not reset it, and a family planning a fall sport around a spring withdrawal needs to know that before, not after.

Note also what the law does not cover. Homecoming, prom, and similar gatherings are not "events or activities" under this section, and districts may include or exclude homeschooled students from those as they choose.

What Missouri does not require

• No notice of intent, no registration, no approval, no homeschool number.
• No standardized testing at any grade, ever.
• No curriculum submission or approval. The statute expressly forbids every department and agency of the state from dictating any statewide curriculum for home schools or FPE schools.
• No teacher certification, degree, or diploma for the parent.
• No portfolio review, no evaluator, no home visit, no progress reports to anyone.
• No requirement to include any concept, topic or practice in conflict with the school's religious doctrines, or to exclude one consistent with them. That protection is written into RSMo 167.031 itself.

College credit and college money, and the Missouri statute that does not ask where your child goes to school

Most states write their funded college-credit program so that it reaches only students enrolled in a public school district. We have now read enough of them to say that plainly. Missouri wrote two of its programs the other way, and one of them names homeschooling in the statute itself. If you have a high schooler, this section is the most valuable thing on this page.

The two words Missouri uses, and why the difference matters to you

RSMo 173.2500 defines them separately. Dual credit courses are "college level coursework delivered by a postsecondary education institution and taught in the high school by instructors with appropriate academic credentials to high school students who are earning high school and college credit simultaneously". A dual enrollment course is:

a postsecondary course of instruction delivered by an approved dual enrollment provider in which a secondary school student is concurrently enrolled in a Missouri high school and the approved dual enrollment provider.

Dual credit is a course the college sends into a high school building, so it is generally out of reach unless your child is enrolled somewhere. Dual enrollment is the one you want. Your child takes the college's own course, from the college, and the definition asks only that the student be a secondary school student concurrently enrolled in a Missouri high school. Missouri does not register homeschools and does not license them, and everything at the top of this page rests on a home school being a school under RSMo 167.031. We are not going to tell you the department has ruled on that specific phrase, because we could not find where it has. We are telling you where the question lives and who answers it, further down.

The scholarship, and the list that is missing a requirement every other state has

RSMo 173.2505, the Dual Credit and Dual Enrollment Scholarship Act, sets out five things a student must be or do. Read the list for what is not in it:

• Be a United States citizen or permanent resident.
• Be a Missouri resident as defined by the coordinating board for higher education.
• Be "enrolled in a dual credit or dual enrollment course offered by an approved dual credit provider or an approved dual enrollment provider".
• Have "a cumulative high school grade point average of at least two and a half on a four point scale or equivalent".
• Meet at least one indicator of economic need.

There is no requirement to be enrolled in a school district. There is no requirement that a superintendent, principal or counselor approve anything. The test is keyed to what the student does and what the family earns, which is the structure that reaches a homeschooled child, and it is not the structure most states used. And subsection 4 is the payoff, with its honest condition stated first:

Subject to appropriation, each eligible student shall be offered a dual credit or dual enrollment scholarship equal to the tuition and fees paid by the student to enroll in a dual credit or dual enrollment course offered by an approved dual credit or dual enrollment provider.

Tuition and fees. Not a percentage, not a capped stipend. The department's own explanation confirms the arithmetic and adds one useful detail: the award is based on actual tuition and fees after other non-loan aid is applied, and a student taking courses from more than one approved college "can receive the scholarship at each one."

The economic-need test, which is broader than families assume

Any one of these qualifies, under 173.2505 and the rule at 6 CSR 10-2.195: being individually eligible to be enrolled in a federal free or reduced-price lunch program based on USDA income levels; residing in a foster home, being a ward of the state, or being homeless as defined by the McKinney-Vento Act; receiving low-income public assistance as part of the immediate family, such as SNAP or WIC; or living in federally subsidized public housing. Note the first one carefully. It asks whether the family would be eligible at USDA income levels, not whether the child is enrolled in a lunch program, which a homeschooled child obviously is not.

And here is where a Missouri homeschool family actually gets stuck, so plan for it. The department's document checklist was written for students who attend a school. For the free and reduced lunch route it asks for a copy of an approval letter carrying the school's name or letterhead, the student's name, the date or academic year, the approval status, and a signature from the school. For the homeless route it asks for a letter from the high school. And every applicant must upload a high school transcript showing an unweighted GPA, plus a release form signed by a parent or legal guardian.

In your family, the school that signs those documents is you. We are not going to tell you the department will accept a letter you wrote, because we do not know and a confident answer from a company with an interest in the answer is worth nothing. We will tell you exactly what to do: email dcde@dhewd.mo.gov, before the priority deadline, say that you are the administrator of a Missouri home school under RSMo 167.031, ask specifically what documentation it requires from a home school family for the GPA and the need indicator, and keep the reply. That email is worth more than any guide, including this one.

The deadline is a race, not a cutoff

This is the single most actionable sentence in the whole program, and it is easy to skim past. Applications are ranked by earliest application received date, and if funding runs short, that order decides who gets paid. The priority deadline is October 1 for the fall semester and February 1 for the spring. Applications after that are considered on or before December 1 and April 1 respectively, based on funding availability.

So the reason to apply in August rather than late September is not neatness. A family that files on the deadline is behind every family that filed in the summer, and in a year where the appropriation is tight, that is the whole difference. Put the fall date on the calendar the week school starts, every year.

Bright Flight, which names homeschooling in the statute

Missouri's academic scholarship, RSMo 173.250, is the one many homeschool families never apply for because they assume it runs through a high school. It does not. The definition of an eligible student requires a qualifying test score and then says the student must be a Missouri resident who has completed secondary coursework through any of several routes, one of which is named directly:

graduation from high school or the virtual public school established in section 161.670, receipt of a general education development (GED) diploma, completion of a program of study through homeschooling or any other program of academic instruction that satisfies the compulsory attendance requirement under section 167.031

The qualifying score is a composite on the ACT or SAT in the top five percent of Missouri test-takers, and it may be achieved in the sophomore, junior or senior year. The money, at subsection 4: a student in the top three percent "shall be offered an academic scholarship of up to three thousand dollars per year", and all of those awards are paid before any student in the fourth and fifth percentiles receives anything; students in the fourth and fifth percentiles are offered up to one thousand dollars per year, provided sufficient funds are appropriated. Awards renew for the second, third and fourth years of college so long as the student stays in compliance.

Two traps, both specific to homeschooling, both avoidable if you read them in ninth grade. First, the score has to be in hand: a family that waits until the fall of senior year to take the ACT once has spent the sophomore and junior attempts the statute gave them. Second, and this is the one that ends applications, eligibility requires the student to be "enrolled full time or accepted for full-time enrollment as a postsecondary student at an approved institution during the academic year immediately following the completion of his or her secondary coursework". A gap year breaks it. And because you are the one who decides which year is your child's final year of secondary coursework, that decision now has a dollar figure attached to it. Write it down, in your records, before the test year rather than after.

The A+ Scholarship, and why we are not going to promise you anything

A+ pays tuition, books and fees at a Missouri public community college or vocational or technical school, and it is the program Missouri families ask about most. RSMo 160.545 subsection 8 conditions the reimbursement on a student "Who has attended a high school in the state for at least two years that meets the requirements of subsection 2 of this section and who has graduated from such a school", with an exception for certain military dependents. Subsection 2 is a list of things a school does, including a partnership plan developed with local business people, labor leaders, parents and college representatives, "with the plan then approved by the local board of education."

The door is not textually shut on nonpublic schools. Subsection 3 says any nonpublic school in the state "may apply to the state board of education for certification that it meets the requirements of this section subject to the same criteria as public high schools", and students of a certified nonpublic school are then eligible on an equal basis. What that would mean for a family school is a partnership plan approved by a local board of education and a set of measurable performance standards accepted by the state board, which is a very different relationship with the state from the one described everywhere else on this page.

We did not find a certified home school, and we are not going to claim none exists, because absence of evidence in a state that keeps no homeschool registry is not evidence. If A+ matters to your family, ask the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education in writing whether a home school may be certified under subsection 3 and what it would require. The practical route families actually use is different and worth naming plainly: A+ counts attendance at a designated high school for the last two years, so a homeschooled student who enrolls in an A+ designated public high school for eleventh and twelfth grade and graduates from it can qualify. That is a real decision with real costs on both sides, and it is better made in ninth grade than in twelfth.

What to do, in order

• Pick the college first. The scholarship only pays at an approved dual credit or dual enrollment provider, and the department publishes the list. Confirm the specific institution is on it before your child registers for anything.
• Email dcde@dhewd.mo.gov in the summer, not in September, and ask what documentation it needs from a home school family. Keep the reply with your records.
• Apply the week the portal opens for the term. Earliest received date decides who gets funded.
• Book the ACT or SAT in tenth grade. Bright Flight counts a score from sophomore year onward, and one attempt in October of senior year is not a plan.
• Write down which year is your child's final year of secondary coursework, and keep the transcript current enough that an unweighted cumulative GPA can be produced on a week's notice. Both programs ask for one, and in Missouri you are the only person who can issue it.

The honest part

Missouri's law is better drafted than most, and the reason is that it was clearly written by people who had thought about what could go wrong for a family rather than about what a family might get away with. The daily log as a defense, the review limited to the prosecuting attorney, the curriculum protection, the twelve month sports rule that closes a loophole without punishing anybody honest: that is careful work.

What Missouri does not do, and cannot do, is tell you how your child is actually doing. There is no test, no evaluator, no annual anything. You will log 1,000 hours and you will know exactly how many hours you taught, which is a genuinely useful number and is not the same number as how much your child learned.

That gap is not a criticism of the law. Missouri decided that measuring a child is a family's job, and we think that is the right call. But somebody still has to do the measuring, and in this state the somebody is you, on a schedule you invent, with no reminder from anyone.

How an AI teacher fits into a state like this one

Start with what we are not. Kitchen Table School is not a registered or accredited school in Missouri or anywhere else. We are not a home school or an FPE school; those are legal descriptions of your school. We do not file your withdrawal letter, we do not administer testing, we are not a scholarship provider, and we do not issue a Missouri diploma. You are the school, and the log is yours.

What we do is the part with no checkpoint in it. 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. Missouri families take the upload your own curriculum path: you pick the materials, the teacher reads them and teaches from their actual pages.

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. Read that list against what Missouri actually asks for and the overlap is unusually close: a written record indicating subjects taught and activities engaged in, a portfolio of the child's work, a record of evaluations of progress, and an hours total you can break out by course. Missouri is one of the few states where a running hour count is not administrative overhead but the literal requirement, and where the resulting log is the defense the statute names.

The 1,000 hours are still yours to teach, and 400 of them still have to happen at your regular location, which is where a teacher who works at your kitchen table happens to sit. What changes is that the log stops being the thing you keep meaning to catch up on.

Curious how this works day to day once the withdrawal letter is delivered? Here's the honest guide to teaching your own curriculum with us, written for every out-of-state family, Missouri included. If you are wondering how to keep the log without it taking over your week, our guide to homeschool record keeping was written for Texas but the habits travel. Or see the requirements for every other state.