Field guide · Confirm with the authority before you file
Homeschooling in New Mexico
Home school registration / notification, by August 1. If you start partway through the year, the deadline is different; see below. Also kept, and shown only if asked: immunization records or waiver.
Notify, level 2 of 4
What New Mexico actually asks of a family teaching their own children. Written plainly, and honest where the answer is that nobody asks for anything.
You tell
New Mexico Public Education Department, on the home school registration form posted on its website
By
August 1
Within 30 days of establishing the home school, then on or before 1 AUGUST each subsequent year
Who reviews it
PED records the registration
No academic review.
If you skip it
An unregistered home school is not recognised for compulsory-attendance purposes.
Who is in charge
New Mexico Public Education Department
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
August 1You file
Home school registration / notification
Within 30 days of establishing the home school, then on or before 1 AUGUST each subsequent year
Goes to: New Mexico Public Education Department, on the home school registration form posted on its website
No fixed dateYou keep
Immunization records or waiver
n/a
How often: continuous
Goes to: KEPT BY THE OPERATOR, not submitted
The words a reviewer uses
A notice to the department on its home school registration form. Instruction must be given by a person with at least a high school diploma or its equivalent.
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 New Mexico, which today are English (326 of 383), Mathematics (490 of 574), Science (510 of 604), Social Studies (254 of 1631), Physical Education (6 of 106) and Arts (3 of 115). Those figures count the topics we carry for ages 5 to 12 that cite one of New Mexico's published standards. A further 140 Social Studies topics are matched only to the national C3 Framework, which is guidance, not New Mexico's own standard. 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
- law.justia.comNot a government sourceChecked 11 Aug 2026
- PED, Notification of a Home School, with statutesRead on an archive copyChecked 5 Oct 2026
- Checked 7 Oct 2026
- Checked 7 Oct 2026
Sources last checked on 2026-10-07: New Mexico Legislature, 2017 House Bill 270 as introduced, reproducing NMSA 1978 Section 22-1-2.1 in full (existing wording shown by bracketed deletions). That is the date we checked, not the date the rule last changed.
Check it yourself: the source we used.
Guidance, not legal advice. Rules change and districts vary: confirm with the authority named above before you file.