Guides · August 8, 2026•13 min read

How to Homeschool in Colorado: Four Routes, One Choice

Colorado is a genuinely multi-route state, and the routes are not variations on a theme. Each one is a separate exemption from compulsory attendance carrying its own obligations, and picking one means picking all of them. The standard homeschool route is specific and light: a one-page notice fourteen days ahead, 172 days averaging four hours, a named subject list, and testing every other year from third grade. The expensive errors here are all errors of route rather than errors of compliance.

Pick the route before anything else

The route people mean by homeschooling is the nonpublic home-based educational program. Instruction happens in a home, provided by the parent or an adult relative the parent designates, and it is expressly not under the supervision and control of a school district. It is also expressly not a private school.

The second route is enrolling in an independent or parochial school. A 1988 Colorado Court of Appeals decision held that children enrolled in such a school may be taught at home, and that where the district has not challenged the adequacy of the education, the sufficiency of attendance is a matter between the family and the school rather than the district. Enrolling this way removes you from the home-based program rules entirely; the school’s own rules apply instead, and no notice goes to any district.

The third is narrow and worth knowing if it fits you. A child taught by a teacher licensed under Colorado law is exempt from compulsory attendance under a different subsection. A parent who holds and maintains a current Colorado teaching licence and teaches their own child under that exemption is, on the reading the state homeschool organisation takes, outside both the notice and the testing requirements. The statute is silent on days, hours and subjects for this route, and we are not going to fill that silence with what a different route requires.

The fourth is not homeschooling. Public online schools and district or regional part-time and enrichment programmes enrol your child as a public school student. The education department states it plainly: a student completing a homeschool program is a different thing from a student enrolled in an online school or a public school that lets them work from home.

Now the mistake. Do not file a notice of intent and enrol in an independent school at the same time. Doing both subjects your family to both bodies of law simultaneously, including where they conflict, and there is no benefit on the other side of it. Choose, then act once.

The notice, and the word that caps what a district can ask

You provide written notification of the establishment of your program to a school district within the state, fourteen days before you start, and again each year the program continues.

The content is capped. The statement certifies only the name, age, place of residence, and number of hours of attendance of each child in the program. That word only is doing real work: it defines the maximum content of the notice, not the minimum.

There is no acceptance step and no approval power. A district has no statutory authority to refuse a compliant notice or to require an interview, and it does not go to the state education department, which cannot receive letters of intent at all. Note also that it goes to a district within the state, which need not be your district of residence, though in practice notifying your resident district as well is sensible so that nobody counts your child absent.

One statutory exception exists. A child who was habitually truant in the last six months of school before enrollment may not be enrolled in a home-based program unless the parent also submits a written description of the curricula to be used. If that describes your situation, plan for the extra document rather than being surprised by it.

The age window is generous at both ends. Notice is not required until your child is six, the program need not be established until seven, and neither the program nor the notice is required after your child turns sixteen.

172 days, four hours averaged, and a list

The program includes no fewer than 172 days of instruction, averaging four instructional contact hours per day. That is roughly 688 contact hours across a year, and the word averaging matters: a long Tuesday and a short Friday are fine.

If you begin partway through a year, the department confirms you may prorate the 172 days against the attendance already completed, so starting in January does not mean owing a full year of days in half a year.

The subject list is statutory and short: communication skills of reading, writing and speaking; mathematics; history; civics; literature; science; and regular courses of instruction in the constitution of the United States. The list says it need not be limited to those, so it is a floor. Which curriculum you use to cover it is entirely your choice, and the department says so. Our guide to choosing homeschool curriculum is more useful to you here than the statute is.

Testing every other year, and the number that matters

This is what most distinguishes Colorado from its low-regulation neighbours. Your child is evaluated on reaching grades three, five, seven, nine and eleven. Odd grades only, so every other year.

Two methods are permitted. A nationally standardized achievement test, or an evaluation by a qualified person. The state’s own assessment does not satisfy the requirement. A qualified person means specifically a Colorado licensed teacher, a teacher employed by an independent or parochial school, a licensed psychologist, or someone holding a graduate degree in education. That definition governs who may evaluate, not who may teach.

Results go to the district that received your notice, or to an independent or parochial school in Colorado, in which case you tell the district which school has them.

Now the threshold, stated plainly because it is the thing families worry about. If the composite score is above the thirteenth percentile, the exemption continues. If it is at or below the thirteenth percentile, the district shall require the parents to place the child in a public, independent or parochial school until the next testing period.

Two things take the edge off that. First, no action may be taken until your child has been given the opportunity to be retested, using an alternate version of the same test or a different approved test you select. The retest safeguard is written into the statute. Second, the thirteenth percentile is a low bar by design; it is a floor for catching an education that is not happening, not a standard of achievement.

If you take the evaluation route instead, the standard is whether your child is making sufficient academic progress according to their own ability, which is a kinder measure for a child who tests badly. Note that the retest safeguard is written into the testing path and not into the evaluation path. Scores are never used in measuring school performance or accreditation, so nobody has an institutional interest in your child’s number. Our guide to homeschool testing covers choosing between the two routes.

Worth knowing for your peace of mind: we found no documented case of a Colorado district ordering a placement after a low score. The mechanism is real and is restated everywhere; instances of it running are not.

Records, kept permanently

Records are maintained on a permanent basis by the parent in charge of the program, and must include attendance data, test and evaluation results, and immunization records. The list says it need not be limited to those.

Permanent is unusual. Most states either specify a couple of years or say nothing at all, and Colorado asking you to keep attendance indefinitely is a real if quiet obligation. It is also an argument for keeping records somewhere that survives a house move and a laptop failure.

Production has a narrow trigger. Records go to the district that received your notice on fourteen days’ written notice, and only if that district’s superintendent has probable cause to believe the program is not in compliance. Probable cause is a real standard rather than a formality, and we found no documented instance of a Colorado superintendent invoking it.

Which still leaves you holding attendance, results and immunization records for years. An online homeschool planner records the day as it happens with the subject and the work attached, counts your instruction days toward the 172 and your contact hours against the four-hour average, and keeps it all in one place you can still open in nine years. $9 a month or $79 a year, with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Get started. Our guide to homeschool record keeping covers the paper version.

Nobody has to be qualified

For the home-based route, no degree, credential or teaching licence is required. The statute exempts the instructing parent from the educator licensing act and from teacher employment rules outright.

The instructor does have to be the parent or guardian, or an adult relative the parent designates. That is a narrower rule than it looks: it does not accommodate a hired tutor running your program, though it says nothing about who teaches an individual class along the way.

Leaving public school

There is no separate withdrawal form. The notice itself establishes the exemption, and a child participating in a home-based program is not subject to compulsory school attendance.

The timing is the thing to get right, because the notice runs fourteen days ahead. A student still enrolled during those fourteen days is still subject to attendance rules, and absences are not automatically excused until the district processes the change. So file, keep sending, and stop on the day the program begins. Habitual truancy in Colorado means four unexcused absences in a month or ten in a year, and court proceedings are explicitly a last resort after an intervention plan, but the whole sequence is avoidable by counting to fourteen.

One timing rule worth knowing if your child plays sport: a student who withdraws more than fifteen days after the school year starts is, for the rest of that year, deemed to attend the school they withdrew from.

Sports and activities, on an equal basis

Colorado is strong here. A child in a home-based program has the same rights as a student enrolled in the public school of the district where they live or are enrolled, and may participate on an equal basis in any extracurricular or interscholastic activity the public school offers.

A district, school or interscholastic organisation may not require your child to enrol in a course or earn course credits as a condition of participating. The exception is narrow and sensible: where the activity is an extension of a course, such as a performing arts group.

The school district of attendance, for participation purposes, is the district that received your notice. Participation at more than one school is allowed only where the first does not offer the activity, and districts choose the school and may reserve roster slots for enrolled students under their adopted policies. Fees collected for an activity have to fund that activity.

On the athletic association: the statute grants the access and bars the course-enrollment condition, and your child is then subject to the association’s ordinary eligibility rules on age, amateurism, transfers and semesters like anyone else. The statute controls the right to try out; the association controls the rules of competition. That is a far better position than Kentucky, where the association’s full-time enrollment rule closes the door completely. Our guide to homeschool sports access explains the mechanism.

High school, and the stipend that names you specifically

Colorado sets no homeschool credit or diploma requirements. You determine completion, you issue the diploma and the transcript, and the state maintains no graduation records for home-based students.

Returning to public school is handled better here than in most states. A district shall accept transcripts for credit from a home-based program, and may reject them only if it administers testing and the testing does not verify their accuracy. It may test to place your child at the right grade, with your consent. Our guide to the homeschool transcript covers how to build one that holds up to that.

The College Opportunity Fund is the per-credit-hour tuition stipend for in-state undergraduates, and homeschool graduates qualify. At participating private institutions the eligibility language names successful completion of a nonpublic home-based educational program explicitly, which is a rare thing to see written down. The per-credit rate is set annually by the legislature and carries a lifetime credit cap, so check the current figure rather than a remembered one.

Concurrent enrollment is the weak spot. Colorado’s statutory concurrent enrollment generally requires enrollment in a public school or local education provider, so an independent home-based student is not automatically eligible. Access usually runs through part-time public enrollment or through the independent school route with an agreement, and it varies district by district. The fifth-year programme keeps the student as a public school student for that year, so it is only available through public enrollment. Ask your specific district rather than assuming.

The money, and what part-time enrollment costs you

There is no direct state funding for independent homeschoolers. No education savings account, no voucher, no homeschool tax credit. The education department is blunt that the parent is responsible for the costs.

A 2024 constitutional amendment to enshrine a right to school choice, naming home schools, needed a supermajority and failed narrowly on the popular vote. Nothing about homeschool funding changed as a result.

One correction worth making, because Colorado’s 529 deduction is genuinely generous and families assume it helps. The state subtraction is limited to higher education and apprenticeship expenses, and the revenue department states that qualified higher education expenses do not include elementary or secondary education expenses. So a Colorado 529 gives you no state tax benefit for K-12 homeschool costs. Our guide to homeschool tax deductions covers what actually works.

The only public money reaching Colorado homeschool families runs through part-time and enrichment enrollment, and it comes with a status change: for the enrolled portion, your child is a part-time public school student and the district counts them for part-time funding. A 2026 school finance act tightened this considerably, barring these programmes from funding private activities and private purchases, requiring the same teacher licensing and background rules as the authorising provider, requiring a copy of your notice to verify eligibility, and restricting operation outside geographic boundaries. That fight over roughly a hundred million dollars in part-time funding is where the state’s actual scrutiny sits, not on individual home-based programmes. Our guide to homeschool funding sets Colorado against states with real accounts.

If your child has an IEP

There is no individual entitlement while home-based. Colorado treats homeschooled students as parentally placed private school students for special education purposes, which puts them in the equitable services framework: a limited proportionate share of federal funds, and at most a services plan describing what the administrative unit elects to provide. That is less than an IEP and gives no right to any particular service.

Child find still applies, so you can request an evaluation through your local administrative unit and it must be done. On withdrawal, the district issues prior written notice that IEP services will cease, and your child moves into the services plan framework. If they later re-enrol, the IEP is reviewed and typically reinstated.

The mistake that causes almost all the trouble

Confusing the routes. It happens in two directions and both are costly.

The first is doing two routes at once: filing a notice of intent and also enrolling in an independent school, which buys you both sets of obligations and none of the benefits. The second is assuming a public online school or a district enrichment programme is homeschooling. It is public school enrollment, with public school rules and state testing attaching, and families discover that after the first assessment window rather than before.

Decide which column of the figure above you are in, on purpose, before you file or enrol anything. Everything else in Colorado is straightforward once that is settled. New to all of this? Our guide to how to start homeschooling takes over from here.

Compulsory attendance in Colorado runs from age six, as of August 1, to the seventeenth birthday, with homeschool-specific age nuances described above. Tuition stipend rates, 529 deduction limits, district part-time policies and athletic association bylaws all change, and the 2026 school finance act’s rules for part-time programmes were still in rulemaking when this was written. Confirm the current detail with the Colorado Department of Education, the district that received your notice, or a homeschool legal organization before you act on it. This guide describes the shape of Colorado law as of August 2026, not the paperwork of any particular year.

Frequently asked questions

How do I notify the state to homeschool in Colorado? You do not notify the state. You send a written notice to a school district within Colorado fourteen days before starting, and again every year. It certifies only each child’s name, age, place of residence and number of hours of attendance, and no district can refuse it.

How many days and hours does Colorado require? At least 172 days of instruction, averaging four instructional contact hours a day, which is about 688 hours across a year. If you start partway through a year you may prorate the 172 days against attendance already completed.

Does Colorado require testing for homeschoolers? Yes, in grades three, five, seven, nine and eleven. You choose between a nationally standardized achievement test and an evaluation by a qualified person, and results go to the district that received your notice or to an independent or parochial school.

What happens if my child scores below the threshold? A composite at or below the thirteenth percentile means the district requires placement in a public, independent or parochial school until the next testing period. No action can be taken before your child is offered a retest, on an alternate version or a different approved test that you select.

Can homeschoolers play public school sports in Colorado? Yes. A home-based student may participate on an equal basis in any extracurricular or interscholastic activity the public school offers, and cannot be required to enrol in a course to do it, except where the activity extends a course. Ordinary athletic association eligibility rules still apply.