Field guide · Confirm with the authority before you file
Homeschooling in Missouri
Nothing to file each year. Missouri asks for no registration and no annual return. If your child aged five to seven is enrolled in a public school, send the school a written request to drop them from its rolls when they stop attending. Kept at home, and shown only if asked: instruction log and portfolio.
Nothing to file each year, level 1 of 4
What Missouri 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, in an ordinary year
If your child aged five to seven is enrolled in a public school, send the school a written request to drop them from its rolls when they stop attending.
By
Nothing is due each year
No date in the year. A notice falls due only on the event under You tell.
Who reviews it
Only the local prosecuting attorney
Missouri law says home school enforcement and records are subject to review only by the local prosecuting attorney. You maintain the records yourself; producing a daily log that shows a course of instruction meeting the law's requirements is a defence to a prosecution under the compulsory attendance law and to an educational neglect charge.
If you skip it
A parent who violates the compulsory attendance law is guilty of a class C misdemeanor. That includes letting a child aged five to seven who is enrolled in a public school stop attending without a written request to drop the child from the school's rolls. The home school records are your evidence of regular instruction: producing a daily log that shows a course of instruction meeting the law's requirements is a defence to a prosecution under the compulsory attendance law and to an educational neglect charge. After a conviction, the child must be enrolled in a school within three public school days, and each school day after that counts as a separate violation.
Who is in charge
None at state level. Missouri law says home school enforcement and records are subject to review only by the local prosecuting attorney, and no state department or agency may dictate a statewide curriculum for home 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 in an ordinary year. If your child aged five to seven is enrolled in a public school, send the school a written request to drop them from its rolls when they stop attending. Each item below applies only on the event it names, or is kept at home.
No fixed dateYou keep
Instruction log and portfolio
n/a
How often: continuous
Goes to: Kept at home; not submitted
Offer at least 1,000 hours of instruction, at least 600 of them in reading, language arts, mathematics, social studies, science, or academic courses related to those subjects and suited to the child's age and ability. At least 400 of those 600 hours must take place at the regular home school location. Keep a plan book, diary or other written record of subjects taught and activities, a portfolio of samples of the child's academic work, and a record of evaluations of the child's academic progress, or other written or credible evidence equivalent to these. These hour and record requirements do not apply to a pupil sixteen years of age or older.
No fixed dateYou file
Written request to drop a child aged five to seven from a public school's rolls (only if the child is enrolled in a public school)
When your child stops attending the public school
How often: Once, when the child stops attending the public school
Goes to: The public school where your child aged five to seven is enrolled, if any
Missouri does not require children aged five to seven to be enrolled in school. But a parent who enrolls a child aged five to seven in a public school must make sure the child attends regularly, and non-attendance puts the parent in violation of the compulsory attendance law. The law excuses the child from attending when the parent makes a written request that the child be dropped from the school's rolls.
Not required
Often assumed. None of it is asked of a family homeschooling in Missouri.
Written notice to your public school district that you are pursuing other educational options (only if your child is on a public school's rolls)Not required. Only for a child who is on a public school district's rolls. To take the child off the rolls, give the district written notice that you intend to pursue other educational options under section 167.031 and ask that the child be dropped from
The words a reviewer uses
Hours of instruction in the named subjects; the log is the evidence.
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 Missouri, which today are English (326 of 383), Mathematics (490 of 574), Science (429 of 604) and Physical Education (6 of 106). Those figures count the topics we carry for ages 5 to 12 that cite one of Missouri's published standards. A further 178 Social Studies topics are matched only to the national C3 Framework, which is guidance, not Missouri's own standard. Arts is not in the app for Missouri 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 Missouri'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
- Checked 11 Aug 2026
- Checked 11 Aug 2026
- Checked 7 Oct 2026
- Checked 7 Oct 2026
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- Checked 7 Oct 2026
Sources last checked on 2026-10-07: Revised Statutes of Missouri 167.012, home school defined, records, hours and daily log (Missouri Revisor of Statutes). That is the date we checked, not the date the rule last changed.
The law itself: RSMo § 167.031; RSMo § 167.042; RSMo § 167.012. 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.