Maryland Homeschool Record Keeping: What You Must Document and How

Maryland is one of the more heavily regulated homeschool states in the country. Parents here don't just choose an education philosophy and teach — they also accept an ongoing documentation burden that most other states don't require. Understanding exactly what you must keep, how to organize it, and what happens when you don't is essential from the first day of your program.

This post covers Maryland's documentation requirements under COMAR 13A.10.01, what county reviewers actually look for, and the record-keeping systems that experienced Maryland families use to stay consistently review-ready.

The Legal Framework: What COMAR Requires

Maryland's home instruction law (COMAR 13A.10.01) requires parents operating under Option 1 (direct county oversight) to:

1. Submit a Home Instruction Notification form to the local superintendent at least 15 days before beginning instruction. This is a one-time requirement when you start, and must be re-filed if you move to a new county.
2. Provide regular, thorough instruction in eight mandatory subjects: English, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, Art, Music, Health, and Physical Education.
3. Maintain a portfolio that demonstrates this instruction occurred, available for review by the county superintendent or their designee.
4. Submit to periodic portfolio reviews — up to three times per year, though most counties schedule two.

The law does not specify a minimum number of instructional days, a required number of hours per subject, or a specific portfolio format. What it does specify is the consequence of non-compliance: a written deficiency notice giving you 30 calendar days to correct the record. A second deficiency notice can result in mandatory re-enrollment in a public or nonpublic school.

There is no grace period. There is no appeals process that pauses the timeline. Thirty days from the date of the notice is the hard deadline.

What Records You Must Actually Keep

Maryland's requirements translate into four practical categories of documentation:

1. Proof of Notification

Keep a copy of your original Home Instruction Notification form (often called Form 77R or the equivalent county-specific form) with your records. If you submitted it by mail, keep the certified mail receipt. If you submitted it digitally, keep the email confirmation. This document establishes your legal right to homeschool and should be retrievable immediately if questioned.

2. Portfolio of Work Samples

This is the core of Maryland's documentation requirement. Your portfolio must contain samples of your child's work across all eight mandatory subjects. The standard guidance from multiple Maryland counties — explicitly stated in Calvert County's and Prince George's County's published review procedures — is 3 to 5 work samples per subject per semester, representing the beginning, middle, and end of the academic term.

Work samples can include:

• Completed worksheets, essays, or test papers
• Reading logs with books and dates
• Math problem sets
• Science lab notes or observation journals
• Dated art projects or photographs of art projects
• Music practice logs or lesson receipts
• PE activity logs with dates and activities
• Health topic summaries

The critical word is "dated." Undated work samples carry far less weight than dated ones. A reviewer cannot verify when instruction occurred if there are no dates. Get in the habit of dating everything as it's completed.

3. Attendance Documentation

While Maryland does not specify a minimum number of school days in the same way some other states do, you should track days of instruction. Most Maryland homeschool families aim for 180 instructional days, mirroring the public school calendar. A simple attendance log — a calendar with checkmarks or a running tally — is sufficient. Some parents use a spreadsheet; others use a pre-formatted attendance page in their portfolio binder.

4. Curriculum or Course Materials List

You are not required to use a state-approved curriculum. However, keeping a record of what curricular materials you used (textbooks, online programs, workbooks) provides context for the portfolio and helps answer a reviewer's question of "and how did you teach this?" Some counties, including Prince George's County, specifically ask parents using online curricula to provide skill reports showing the date, skill name, time spent, and grade for each assignment.

How Long to Keep Records

Maryland law does not specify a records retention period for homeschool documentation. Practical advice from experienced Maryland families:

• Keep current and prior semester materials until the review for that period is complete and no deficiency notice has been issued.
• Keep high school records (grades 9-12) indefinitely. You will need them for college transcripts, financial aid verification, and potential employer verification. Maryland public schools will not issue a Maryland High School Diploma to homeschooled students — your records are the only official evidence of your child's high school education.
• For younger grades, keep at least one to two years of archived portfolios beyond the current year. If a question about instruction ever arises, having prior years' documentation provides a clear pattern of ongoing education.

The Non-Core Subject Problem

The most common documentation gap — and the most common source of deficiency notices — is Art, Music, Health, and Physical Education. Parents feel confident about their math and reading documentation. These subjects leave a paper trail naturally. The non-core subjects do not.

Here is the practical standard for each:

Physical Education: A dated activity log is the simplest solution. Even a simple weekly note — "30 minutes bike ride, March 3" — documents regular PE instruction. Receipts for sports league participation, swimming lessons, or martial arts classes count as evidence. So do photographs of outdoor activities with dates in the file name.

Art and Music: Dated photographs of art projects, preserved artwork with dates written on the back, music lesson attendance records or receipts, practice logs, concert programs. PGCPS guidelines specifically mention photographs of participation as acceptable documentation.

Health: A list of topics covered during the semester is sufficient for most reviewers. Topics might include nutrition, hygiene, first aid basics, personal safety, mental health awareness, or puberty education (for appropriate ages). Some parents use a purchased health curriculum and keep the completed workbook pages; others document it as discussions and keep a log of topics and dates.

The mistake most parents make is treating these four subjects as afterthoughts that they'll "figure out later." Later usually means two weeks before review, at which point there is nothing to show. The documentation system you use must have a dedicated space for each of these subjects from day one.

Common Documentation Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Waiting until review time to organize. Portfolio reviews typically happen twice a year. If you spend the weeks before each review scrambling to locate, organize, and format materials, you will feel the stress that Maryland parents describe in online communities — the year-round anxiety of "will I pass the eval this year?" Build the system before you start teaching and maintain it weekly.

Using a generic homeschool planner. Generic planners sold on Etsy and Amazon are designed for visual appeal, not legal compliance. Most have no dedicated sections for Art, Music, Health, or PE. Most are designed for printing, not digital submission. And none of them reflect COMAR 13A.10.01's specific subject requirements. A planner that was built for a Texas or Florida family has no legal mapping to Maryland's rules.

Confusing quantity with quality. A thick binder of undifferentiated worksheets is not better than a slim, well-organized portfolio. Reviewers sample the work; they are looking for evidence of progression and breadth across all eight subjects, not a raw page count.

Not saving the notification form. This seems obvious, but parents who move counties, restart after a break, or face administrative questions occasionally discover they cannot locate their original filing. Scan it and keep a digital copy.

The County Variation Factor

Maryland's 24 counties administer the home instruction law independently, which creates meaningful variation in how reviews are conducted. Howard County is generally described as streamlined. Baltimore County and Prince George's County are noted for more thorough review processes. Montgomery County parents have documented cases in which reviewers asked for documentation beyond the legal minimum.

This variation matters for record keeping because you should calibrate your documentation to your county's known practices, not just the baseline legal requirement. If your county is known for detailed scrutiny, keeping more thorough records protects you. If your county is known for straightforward reviews, you still need the legal minimum, but you may have more flexibility in format.

The Maryland Portfolio & Assessment Templates include county-specific guidance alongside the COMAR-aligned documentation system, so you're not building a one-size-fits-all portfolio but one calibrated to how your county actually conducts reviews.

Building a System That Works Year-Round

The families who find Maryland portfolio reviews manageable share one characteristic: they document continuously rather than cyclically. A weekly 15-minute filing session — putting this week's dated work samples into the right subject folder — means review preparation takes an afternoon, not a week.

The documentation burden Maryland places on homeschool families is real. But it is entirely manageable with a structure that was built for these requirements from the start, rather than retrofitted from a generic planner at the last minute.

If you're starting fresh or rebuilding your system, the Maryland Portfolio & Assessment Templates give you a COMAR-aligned, fillable PDF framework for all eight mandatory subjects — including the non-core ones that generic systems skip — so your records are reviewer-ready at any point during the year.

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