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Homeschooling in Maine

What Maine actually asks of a family teaching their own children. Written plainly, and honest where the answer is that nobody asks for anything.

United StatesFiling required

Who is in charge

Maine Department of Education and the resident school administrative unit (SAU) superintendent

Who actually reviews your child

The Maine DOE and the SAU superintendent receive the assessment; a certified Maine teacher or advisory board performs the review.

What you must file

Notice of Intent to Provide Home Instruction

Within 10 calendar days of beginning home instruction in the first year; by 1 SEPTEMBER for each continuing year

Goes to: Maine DOE and the resident superintendent (one submission serves both)

Filed online through the Home Instruction Portal at neo.maine.gov/DOE or on paper.

Annual assessment of academic progress

ATTACHED to the following year's Notice of Intent, by 1 September

Goes to: SUBMITTED with the NOI

One of: a standardized achievement test through the SAU or a commissioner-approved arrangement; an SAU-developed test agreed in advance; a portfolio review by a currently certified Maine teacher; a portfolio review by a local homeschool support group whose reviewer is a certified Maine teacher or administrator; or a review by a local advisory board of one school employee and two home-instruction tutors.

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 app is for. You say what your child did, in a sentence. It maps that to the real curriculum for Maine and builds the record you can hand over the day someone asks. See how it works.

Start your record

Other places in United States

AlabamaAlaskaArizonaArkansasCaliforniaColoradoConnecticutDelawareDistrict of ColumbiaFloridaGeorgiaHawaiiIdahoIllinois
Read at the government's own source. Every requirement above was checked word for word against the authority's own page or statute, on the date shown.
Read at the source on 2026-08-28: Maine DOE, Home Instruction Requirements, Forms & Laws, citing 20-A M.R.S. ยง5001-A(3)(A)(4). Its words for continuing years: 'On or before September 1st of each subsequent year of home instruction, the student's parent or guardian shall file a letter with the school officials of the administrative unit in which the student resides and the commissioner'. The 175-day and subject-list assurance was MISSING from this page until today and has been added.
Check it yourself: the authority's own page.