Guides · July 20, 2026•Updated July 29, 2026•6 min read

How to Homeschool in California: The Four Legal Paths

Homeschooling is fully legal in California and the state is friendlier to it than its reputation suggests. What confuses new families is that there is no law called homeschooling here. There are four unrelated legal mechanisms that all get called homeschooling locally, and your first job is simply to pick one. This is what each involves.

There is no law called homeschooling here

California never wrote a homeschool statute. Instead, families operate under existing exemptions from compulsory public school attendance, which is why the four routes below have so little to do with one another.

That is good news in practice. It means no curriculum approval, no state homeschool registry, and no teaching credential for the routes most families use.

The four paths at a glance

Path one: file your own private school affidavit

The classic independent route, and the one most fully independent California homeschoolers use. You establish your home as a small private school by filing the Private School Affidavit, usually called the PSA, with the California Department of Education.

What filing actually involves

It is a short online form, filed once a year, and it is free. You are declaring that a private school exists at your address, so it asks for things a school would know: enrollment, address, and who is teaching.

Nobody inspects it, nobody approves it, and you do not receive a licence back. Filing is the act.

The filing window

Schools already operating file during a set window in October. A school starting mid-year can file when it starts, which matters if you are withdrawing a child in February and worrying you have missed something.

Print or save your confirmation. It is the only evidence you filed, and it is what you show a district that asks.

What the affidavit does and does not do

• You choose the curriculum. No approval, no prescribed program, no reporting on what you picked.
• You keep records. An attendance register and a list of the courses of study, plus who is teaching and their qualifications.
• You teach the usual subjects. The branches of study taught in public schools, in English.
• No state testing. Affidavit schools are private schools, and private schools are not part of the state testing system.

Path two: a private school satellite program

A PSP is an umbrella private school that files the affidavit itself and enrolls your child as one of its students. Legally your child attends that private school; practically you teach at home exactly as you would on path one.

You get the record keeping handled, often report cards and transcripts, and frequently classes, field trips and community. You pay a fee, and you accept whatever that PSP asks of its families, which varies from almost nothing to a great deal.

This is the path for families who want independence but would rather not hold the paperwork themselves.

Path three: charter school independent study

California’s distinctive offer, and the reason people from other states are surprised by it. A homeschool-friendly public charter enrolls your child, you teach at home, and the school provides instructional funds to spend through approved vendors.

What the funds buy

Curriculum, online classes, tutoring, music lessons, sports and enrichment, ordered through the charter’s vendor system rather than reimbursed to you. For many families it is the difference between a lean year and a rich one.

What you give up

You are a public school family now, and the trade is real. A supervising teacher checks in on a schedule, work samples are collected and kept, state testing applies, and the funds cannot buy religious materials.

Popular charters carry waiting lists, so apply earlier than feels necessary. Our guide to homeschool funding covers how this compares with programs in other states.

Path four: instruction by a credentialed tutor

The oldest and least used route. A tutor holding a valid California teaching credential for the grades being taught may educate a child directly, with the hours and days set in law rather than left to you.

In practice this applies to families where a parent already holds a credential, or who are hiring a credentialed teacher outright. If that is not you, one of the first three paths is your answer.

Which path should you pick?

Almost everyone lands on the affidavit or a charter, and the deciding question is oversight rather than money.

• Want funding and structure, accept oversight. Charter independent study.
• Want full independence, happy with paperwork. File your own affidavit.
• Want independence without the paperwork. A PSP, for a fee.
• Someone teaching holds a credential. The tutor route is open, though rarely the simplest.

You are not locked in. Families move between the affidavit and a charter between years fairly routinely, usually when the value of the funding stops matching the cost of the reporting.

Withdrawing from your current school

Order matters here more than anywhere else in this guide. Establish the new arrangement first, then withdraw.

File the affidavit, or complete the charter or PSP enrollment, and only then notify the school in writing that your child is transferring to a private school and where records should be sent.

Do not simply stop attending. Unexplained absence starts truancy processes that are tedious to unwind and occasionally alarming, and a short polite letter closes the loop cleanly instead.

If your district contacts you

It usually does not. When it does, it is almost always administrative rather than adversarial: a records request, or a letter generated because a withdrawal was not processed cleanly at the school end.

The useful posture is calm and brief. You are a private school, so you are not accountable to the district for curriculum or progress, and you do not owe an explanation of your teaching. What you can supply is the fact that an affidavit was filed.

Reply in writing rather than by phone, keep a copy of what you send, and do not invite an inspection nobody asked for. If a letter reads as a legal demand rather than a request, that is the point to get advice from a homeschool legal organization before answering.

The records California expects

Affidavit and PSP families keep an attendance register and a list of courses of study. That is the legal minimum, and it is genuinely modest.

Keep more than the minimum anyway. Work samples and progress notes cost little as you go, and they are what a stricter state, a returning school placement or a high school transcript will need later. Charter families simply follow their school’s requirements, which are usually heavier.

Either way the habit is identical: capture a little as you go rather than reconstructing a year in October. A digital homeschool plannerkeeps the register, the course list and the work in one place, entered in seconds as the day happens, and assembles the reports later. $9 a month or $79 a year, with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Get started.

Filing windows, charter funding levels and program rules all change. Confirm the current detail on the California Department of Education site, or with a homeschool legal organization, in the year you actually file. This guide describes the shape of the four routes, not the paperwork of any particular year.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a teaching credential to homeschool in California? No, except on the rarely used tutor path. Affidavit, PSP and charter families need no credential at all.

Is there state testing? Not on the affidavit or PSP paths, because those are private schools. Charter students take state tests like any other public school pupil, which is one of the clearest practical differences between the routes.

Is filing the PSA complicated? No. It is a short online form, it is free, and nothing is approved or inspected afterwards. The most common mistake is not saving the confirmation.

Can my homeschooler return to public school later? Yes, routinely. Districts place returning students using whatever records you can show them, which is one more reason record keeping earns its keep even where the law asks for little.

What about high school and college? Affidavit schools issue their own diploma and transcript, and California colleges admit homeschooled applicants routinely. Start the transcript in ninth grade rather than twelfth, and the general steps in how to start homeschooling take over from here.