Homeschool Requirements in California
California asks for very little. Start with the first section: what you file, if anything, and the date it is due. The rest is short. Every claim here is cited at the foot of the page, so you can check it against the code rather than take our word for it.
What you file, and by when
Depends on option. Most common: file the Private School Affidavit (PSA / “R-4” online form) with the CA Dept. of Education annually between October 1 and October 15, establishing the home as a private school (Ed. Code 33190). Enrolling in a Private School Satellite Program (PSP) shifts the PSA duty to the PSP. Public-school/charter independent study requires district enrollment paperwork instead. The private-tutor option (Ed. Code 48224) requires no filing at all. Note: PSA filers with fewer than 6 students are exempt from some directory-publication elements but still file.
Days or hours
No statutory day/hour count for the PSA (home private school) route, the school must simply be a “full-time day school”; length of the school year/day is set by the private school itself. CDE guidance treats a public-school-comparable calendar (roughly 175-180 days) as prudent but it is not a codified homeschool mandate. The private-tutor option does have a hard rule: at least 3 hours/day, between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m., for 175 days per school year (Ed. Code 48224).
Subjects you must cover
Instruction must be in English (Ed. Code 30, 48222) and cover “the several branches of study required to be taught in the public schools.” Grades 1-6 (Ed. Code 51210): English, mathematics, social sciences, science, visual and performing arts, health, physical education. Grades 7-12 (Ed. Code 51220): English, social sciences, world language, physical education, science, mathematics, visual and performing arts, applied arts, career technical education. No curriculum approval and no teacher credential required (credential required only for the 48224 private-tutor option).
Records you keep
Required for the PSA route: an attendance register recording every absence of a half-day or more (Ed. Code 48222); courses of study offered; names and qualifications of faculty (“persons capable of teaching”); the affidavit information itself. Records must be kept at the school (home) address stated on the affidavit and are subject to inspection by the school-attendance supervisor. Common practice/CDE guidance is to retain for at least 3 years. No records are filed with the state beyond the affidavit.
Those are the pages underneath the transcript rather than the transcript itself. The Records Pack has the attendance and hours log and the portfolio index as editable forms.
Testing or evaluation
None. California requires no standardized testing, no portfolio review, and no evaluation of homeschooled students under the PSA or private-tutor options. (Public charter/district independent study students do take state assessments as enrolled public-school students.)
Diplomas and transcripts
A home-based private school is a private school: the parent/administrator issues its own transcript and diploma, and California does not accredit, approve, or validate them. No state-issued homeschool diploma exists. UC/CSU admission generally goes through the alternate/examination path (SAT/ACT, AP, community-college coursework) rather than an approved a-g course list, since a-g approval requires an approved school. The CHSPE (age 16 or completion of 10th grade) is a state-issued certificate legally equivalent to a diploma and is the standard workaround for employment/military/financial-aid purposes; the GED is available at 18 (or 17 with conditions). Keep detailed course descriptions and credit hours in the transcript. New for 2026: the Safe Learning Environments Act (SB 848), effective July 1, 2026, extends child-abuse-prevention policy, training, mandated-reporter and hiring-vetting duties to private schools. Private satellite programs and multi-family co-ops should work out whether it reaches them. Single-family home private schools with only the parents’ own children are widely read as out of scope, but this is new and untested.
The AP label is a separate permission from anything California asks of you, and it comes from one place. Why AP does not belong on a transcript unless you registered the Course Audit.
A diploma you signed yourself gets read against the transcript behind it. What a college actually does with a homeschool transcript.
Where this comes from
Statute: Cal. Educ. Code 33190 (private school affidavit); 48222 (private school exemption, attendance register, English); 48224 (private tutor: credential, 3 hrs/day, 175 days); 51210 and 51220 (required subjects); 51745 et seq. (independent study); 48412 (CHSPE)
Source: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=EDC§ionNum=48222.
Last reviewed: July 2026. The day is not recorded.
Homeschool law changes, and a page like this goes stale without saying so. Before a filing deadline, read the statute above for yourself. If we are behind, we would rather hear it from you than have you find out at the district office.
All fifty states and DC, each with its statute cited.
Filing is one half of it. Keeping the records is the other, and that is what our Records System is for: the editable transcript with the GPA already wired, 131 course descriptions, and this same statute-cited summary for all fifty states and DC. Thirty-nine dollars, one household, however many children you have.