Field guide · Read at the government's own source
Homeschooling in Illinois
Nothing to file. Illinois requires no notice, no registration and no annual return.
Nothing to file each year, level 1 of 4
What Illinois actually asks of a family teaching their own children. Written plainly, and honest where the answer is that nobody asks for anything.
You tell
No one
No notice is required and there is no register to join. If your child is enrolled in a school now, the Illinois State Board of Education recommends telling that school, preferably in writing, that you are withdrawing them to homeschool, so they are not reported missing or truant.
By
Nothing is due
No date in the year.
Who reviews it
No one
No one routinely. You do not have to submit tests, grades or any other materials to a school, the district or the Illinois State Board of Education. If someone reports you to your Regional Office of Education or Intermediate Service Center, a truancy officer may contact you for more information.
If you skip it
None routinely
If someone reports you to your Regional Office of Education or Intermediate Service Center, the report is considered as a possible truancy case, and a truancy officer may contact you for more information.
Who is in charge
None (home schools operate as private schools)
Who reviews your child is set out at the top of this page, in the authority's own terms.
The year
What you must file
Nothing. There is no registration, no notice and no annual return to submit in Illinois. That freedom is real, and it carries a quiet catch: because nobody ever required a record, there is no file to reach for the day someone finally asks what your child has learned.
The words a reviewer uses
Instruction in the branches of education taught to public-school children, in English.
The part the paperwork does not cover
Filing on time is the easy half. The harder half is the year in between: showing what your child actually learned, in words the reviewer recognises, without turning your home into a school.
That is what this tool is for. You say what your child did, in a sentence. It maps that to the published standards we hold for Illinois, which today are English (326 of 383), Mathematics (490 of 574), Science (514 of 604), Social Studies (5 of 1631) and Physical Education (71 of 106). Those figures count the topics we carry for ages 5 to 12 that cite one of Illinois's published standards. A further 175 Social Studies topics are matched only to the national C3 Framework, which is guidance, not Illinois's own standard. Arts is not in the app for Illinois yet. A moment in any of those subjects is kept on the general map for your child's age and named that way in the record, so the record never cites Illinois's curriculum where we hold none of it. Then it builds the record you can hand over the day someone asks. See how it works.
Sources
- Read 28 Aug 2026
- Read 11 Aug 2026
- Read 6 Oct 2026
Last read at the source on 2026-10-06: Illinois State Board of Education, Illinois Homeschooling. That is the date we read it, not the date the rule last changed.
The law itself: 105 ILCS 5/26-1. We hold no direct link to the authority's page for this jurisdiction.
Guidance, not legal advice. Rules change and districts vary: confirm with the authority named above before you file.