Do you have to register or notify anyone to homeschool in Rhode Island?

At-home instruction plan, for PRIOR APPROVAL. Before at-home instruction begins Submitted to: Local school committee

Homeschooling in Rhode Island

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.

United StatesFiling required

Who is in charge

Local school committee

Who actually reviews your child

The local school committee, as an approval decision, plus attendance records flowing to the superintendent, truant officers and RIDE.

What you must file

At-home instruction plan, for PRIOR APPROVAL

Before at-home instruction begins

Goes to: Local school committee

Rhode Island is not a file-and-go state: the school committee must APPROVE the plan before instruction starts.

Attendance records

As kept by the public schools

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 in public schools, currently 1,080 school hours, equivalent to a 5.5-hour day for 180 days.

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 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 Rhode Island's published standards. We do not hold Rhode Island's own standards for English and Social Studies yet, and they are being added. Physical Education 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.

Start your record

Other places in United States

Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware District of Columbia Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois

Not yet confirmed at the government's own source. The requirements above agree across the sources we could reach, but we have not read them on the authority's own page. Treat them as a guide and confirm before you file.
No single RIDE-published application form was located on 2026-08-11; the 'no statewide form' claim is ASSUMED from the absence of one on the RIDE home-schooling page and the district-level variation described there.
Check it yourself: the source we used.