Field guide · Confirm with the authority before you file
Homeschooling in Rhode Island
Request for school committee approval of at-home instruction, before you start. The full list is below.
Register, level 3 of 4
What Rhode Island actually asks of a family teaching their own children. Written plainly, and honest where the answer is that nobody asks for anything.
You tell
Local school committee
By
Before you start
The statute sets no date, but at-home instruction excuses a child from school attendance only when the school committee has approved it.
Who reviews it
The local school committee, as an approval decision, plus attendance records flowing to the superintendent, truant officers and RIDE.
If you skip it
Without school committee approval, at-home instruction does not excuse your child from school. The parent or other person in control of the child can be fined up to $50 for each day, or part of a day, the child misses. If those days total more than 30 school days in a school year, that person can, on conviction, be jailed for up to six months, fined up to $500, or both. Schools can also refer truant students to family court once other steps have been tried.
Who is in charge
Local school committee
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
No fixed dateYou file
Request for school committee approval of at-home instruction
Before you start. The statute sets no date, but at-home instruction excuses a child from school attendance only when the school committee has approved it.
Goes to: Local school committee
Rhode Island is not a file-and-go state. For teaching at home, the law excuses school attendance only for 'a course of at-home instruction approved by the school committee of the town where the child resides'. This applies to a child who is 6 on or before September 1 of the school year, or is enrolled in kindergarten, until the child turns 18. The statute does not say what you hand in, so ask your school committee what it needs from you, and when, before you start. If the committee refuses to approve, you can appeal to the Rhode Island Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, which decides after a hearing at no cost to you.
No fixed dateYou file
Attendance records
No date is set in the statute. Keep the attendance registers 'made the same as registers kept by the public schools' and return them to the officials listed. Ask your school committee when it wants them.
How often: continuous
Goes to: Returned to the school committee, the superintendent, truant officers and RIDE
Instruction must be for a period 'substantially equal to that required by law in public schools'. Public school districts must provide at least 180 days a year, or the equivalent, and at least 1,080 school hours a year.
The words a reviewer uses
School committee approval requires a period of attendance 'substantially equal to that required by law in public schools', attendance registers kept and returned, and reading, writing, geography, arithmetic, United States and Rhode Island history and the principles of American government taught in English substantially as in public schools, thoroughly and efficiently.
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 Rhode Island, which today are English (326 of 383), Mathematics (491 of 574), Science (514 of 604), Social Studies (4 of 1631) and Physical Education (8 of 106). Those figures count the topics we carry for ages 5 to 12 that cite one of Rhode Island's published standards. A further 175 Social Studies topics are matched only to the national C3 Framework, which is guidance, not Rhode Island's own standard. Arts is not in the app for Rhode Island 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 Rhode Island'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 11 Aug 2026
- Checked 7 Oct 2026
- Checked 7 Oct 2026
- R.I. Gen. Laws § 16-2-2, City and town schools required, school year (Rhode Island General Assembly)Checked 7 Oct 2026
Sources last checked on 2026-10-07: R.I. Gen. Laws § 16-19-1, Attendance required (Rhode Island General Assembly). 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.