Homeschooling in Iowa
What Iowa actually asks of a family teaching their own children. Written plainly, and honest where the answer is that nobody asks for anything.
United StatesFiling requiredWho is in charge
Resident school district (Competent Private Instruction); no filing at all for Independent Private Instruction
Who actually reviews your child
The district receives Form A. Under Independent Private Instruction there is no reviewer at all.
What you must file
Report of Competent Private Instruction (Form A)
By 1 September, or within 14 days of commencing CPI
Goes to: Resident school district
Includes an outline of the courses of study, the subjects covered, lesson plans and time spent on each course. Required only for the CPI routes.
Not required, but often assumed
Independent Private Instruction information
Not required. IPI families file nothing routinely; on request they name the primary instructor, the responsible authority and location, and the enrolled students.
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 Iowa, which today are Mathematics (487 of 496) and Science (525 of 535). Those figures count the topics we carry for ages 5 to 12 that cite one of Iowa's published standards. We do not hold Iowa's own standards for English and Social Studies yet, and they are being added. Physical Education is not in the app for Iowa 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 Iowa'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.
Other places in United States
Sources last checked on 2026-08-11: educate.iowa.gov. That is the date we checked, not the date the rule last changed.