Colorado law specifically refers to homeschooling in Colo. Rev. Stat. § 22-33-104.5. To homeschool under this statute, you’ll need to follow these guidelines.
1. Decide who will be homeschooling your child.
Instruction must be provided by a parent, guardian, or adult relative designated by a parent.
2. Notify a school district that you are homeschooling.
The homeschool statute requires parents to provide 14 days’ notice before starting a home-based education program and annually thereafter. You may file this notice of intent with any school district in the state. The notice must include the names, ages, residence, and hours of attendance of the children to be taught. What to do if the district requests any other information: Under certain circumstances the school district may request a curriculum plan. The law provides that if a child is “habitually truant” during the six months prior to beginning homeschooling, a school district may request a curriculum outline.
3. Teach the required subjects.
You are required to provide 172 days of instruction, averaging four hours per day, in the following subjects: the United States Constitution, reading, writing, speaking, math, history, civics, literature, and science.
4. Keep good records.
The law requires Colorado homeschooling parents to keep attendance records, test and evaluation results, and immunization records. The school district where you send your original notice of intent can request access to these documents under certain conditions. If the superintendent “has probable cause to believe” the homeschool program is not in compliance with the law and requests access to a family’s homeschool records, he or she is required to provide the parent with 14 days’ notice.
5. Test or evaluate your student.
Students must be assessed with a nationally standardized achievement test or by a “qualified person” to determine if they have made sufficient academic progress according to their ability. Your child must be tested or evaluated in grades 3, 5, 7, 9, and
11. The test must be a nationally standardized achievement test.
If you decide to have your child evaluated rather than tested, you must choose one of the following people to conduct the evaluation: a Colorado certified teacher, a teacher employed by a private school, a licensed psychologist, or a person with a graduate degree in education. What to do with the test or evaluation results: The results must be submitted to either the school district to which you sent your notice of intent, or you may choose to submit the results to an independent or parochial school within the state of Colorado. If you do not send the results to the school to which you sent the notice of intent, you must inform that school where you sent the test or evaluation results. What may happen if your student does not make “adequate progress” according to the law: If a child does not score above the 13th percentile on a nationally standardized achievement test, he or she can be given an alternate version of the same test or a different nationally standardized achievement test. If the score is still below the 13th percentile, the school district will require the parent to place the child in a public, independent, or parochial school until the next testing period. If an evaluation demonstrates that a child is not making progress in accordance with his or her ability, the school district can require the child’s parents to place the child in a public, independent, or parochial school until the next testing period.
