Massachusetts · Record-Keeping Guide

Homeschool Record Keeping in Massachusetts: The Plan, the Approval, and the Portfolio

Massachusetts is an approval state, run town by town under the Charles decision: you submit an education plan before you start, and show progress when the year ends - most often through progress reports or a portfolio of dated work. A daily record carries both ends of that bargain.

The Massachusetts framework: plan, approve, and show progress

There's no homeschool statute in Massachusetts; instead, the SJC's Care and Protection of Charles decision (1987) interprets the compulsory attendance law (M.G.L. c. 76, § 1). In practice, families do three things:

Submit an education plan to your superintendent or school committee before starting, and annually: the subjects you'll teach, the curriculum and materials, your instruction hours (plans commonly mirror the public-school benchmarks of 180 days and 900 elementary / 990 secondary hours), and who will be teaching.
Meet the approval standard: instruction equal "in thoroughness, efficiency, and progress" to the local public schools. Districts review your plan - but they cannot dictate your curriculum or methods, cannot require you to hold a teaching certificate, and cannot require home visits (Brunelle v. Lynn, 1998).
Show progress at year's end by a method negotiated with the district: standardized testing, periodic progress reports, or a dated portfolio of the student's work. Progress reports and portfolios are the most commonly agreed choices.

In a negotiated system, the documented family holds the cards Because every town works out its own arrangement, the family with a complete, dated record negotiates from strength: propose the portfolio or progress-report option, and your evidence already exists - organized, dated, and unarguable - before anyone asks for it.

What a Massachusetts education plan and portfolio should hold

The plan itself: subject list, materials, and proposed hours - refreshed each year.
A running record of instruction - the cleanest support for "thoroughness, efficiency, and progress."
Dated work samples across the year - fall-to-spring spread is what shows progress, not a single stack from May.
Book lists and hours - breadth and quantity, answered in two artifacts.
Copies of everything you submit and every approval letter - your file is your proof of the arrangement.

How The Homeschool Log maps to each requirement

📋 The plan's subject list, already real Your subjects live in the app per child - and by renewal time, every one of them has a year of dated evidence behind it.

✅ Hours that answer the 900/990 question Log minutes as you go and the instruction-hours line of your plan becomes a number you can stand behind, not an estimate.

🖼️ The portfolio, built as the year happens Photographed work samples file themselves by date and subject; the book log fills itself from a snapped cover. Come June, the portfolio exists.

🧾 Progress reports the district will actually enjoy Generate per-subject narrative summaries from your own entries, attach the attendance register and samples, and the year-end method you proposed is a formality. See a sample report →

Negotiate from strength, all year long

One sentence a day builds the plan's evidence, the hours, and the portfolio - before the district ever asks.

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This guide summarizes the framework from Care and Protection of Charles (1987) and Brunelle v. Lynn (1998) in plain language for convenience. It isn't legal advice, and practices genuinely vary town to town; verify current expectations with your district or a group like AHEM, MHLA, or HSLDA.