Maryland Homeschool Required Subjects, Attendance, and the 15-Day Rule Explained

Most parents starting homeschool in Maryland quickly learn there are eight mandatory subjects. What they don't fully understand until their first portfolio review is what "regular, thorough instruction" actually means in practice — and how much documentation each of those subjects requires.

Maryland's regulations are intentionally vague on implementation specifics. COMAR 13A.10.01 sets the subjects and the standard but leaves the question of how to demonstrate compliance largely up to the parent. That gap between knowing the rules and knowing how to satisfy a county reviewer is where most families run into trouble.

The 15-Day Rule: What Happens Before You Start

Before your first day of home instruction, Maryland law requires you to submit a Home Instruction Notification to your local superintendent's office. The legal requirement is that this notification be filed at least 15 calendar days prior to beginning instruction.

This is not a waivable formality. If you withdraw your child from public school and begin teaching the next day without filing the notification, you are technically in violation of COMAR — regardless of how strong your curriculum is. Counties have used procedural non-compliance as grounds to initiate truancy proceedings in extreme cases.

The notification itself is typically a single-page form (sometimes called a Form 77R or the county's equivalent Home Instruction Notification document). It captures basic information: child's name, grade level, parent contact information, and the pathway (Option 1 county supervision, or Option 2/3 umbrella oversight) under which you'll operate.

After the form is submitted, the county assigns your family to a reviewer. For Option 1 families, that reviewer will contact you to schedule the first portfolio review, typically after the first semester of instruction is complete.

One practical note: the 15-day clock runs from filing, not from the county's acknowledgment. Keep a copy of the submitted form with proof of delivery — email confirmation, certified mail receipt, or the county's stamp on a hand-delivered copy. This documentation protects you if an administrative dispute ever arises.

Maryland's Eight Required Subjects

COMAR 13A.10.01 specifies that home instruction programs must cover the following eight subjects:

1. English (reading, writing, speaking, and listening)
2. Mathematics
3. Science
4. Social Studies
5. Art
6. Music
7. Health
8. Physical Education

The first four are what most families think of when they think "school." The challenge — and the source of the most review anxiety — is the second four: Art, Music, Health, and Physical Education.

Maryland does not require formal classes for these subjects. A child taking swim lessons satisfies Physical Education. A child working through a structured music theory workbook satisfies Music. A family systematically covering nutrition, hygiene, and first aid satisfies Health. Art can be demonstrated through drawings, craft projects, or time in a community art class.

What the regulation requires is that instruction in each subject be both regular and thorough. That phrase is the legal standard.

What "Regular, Thorough Instruction" Actually Means

"Regular, thorough instruction" is COMAR's operative phrase for what your program must demonstrate. The regulation does not define it numerically — there is no minimum hours per subject per week, no required days of instruction, and no specific test score threshold that qualifies as compliance.

What this phrase means in practice is that your portfolio must show evidence that the instruction happened consistently over the course of the semester, and that it was substantive enough to constitute real learning rather than cursory exposure.

County reviewers are not looking for perfection. A well-trained mind review of what Maryland counties actually assess reveals that reviewers typically ask to see three to five artifacts per subject per semester. An artifact can be a worksheet, a reading log entry, a photograph of an activity, a receipt for a class, or a scored assignment. The expectation is variety and continuity — evidence that instruction happened at multiple points throughout the semester, not just in the week before the review.

Prince George's County Public Schools (PGCPS) provides one of the state's most detailed specifications: for online curriculum, they require skill reports showing the date of work, skill name, time spent, and grade. For Physical Education and Music, they explicitly accept dated logs, photographs, or class receipts. This is higher documentation granularity than most counties — but it illustrates the general expectation that non-core subjects require tangible proof.

Attendance Requirements: What Maryland Does and Does Not Require

Maryland's home instruction regulations do not specify a minimum number of instructional days or hours per subject. This surprises many new homeschoolers accustomed to the 180-day public school year.

What the state requires is that instruction be provided during the full academic year on a schedule that constitutes regular instruction. In practice, this is interpreted to mean a school-year calendar — roughly September through June — though there is no prohibition against year-round schooling or an abbreviated summer term.

The practical implication: do not track daily hours of instruction unless your county specifically requires it. Maryland law does not mandate hourly attendance logs, and including them in your portfolio can actually create problems. If your log shows a 45-minute science lesson when your portfolio claims "thorough" science instruction, a strict reviewer might question whether 45 minutes is sufficient — even though the law doesn't specify a minimum. Reviewers can use whatever documentation you voluntarily provide to generate objections.

Focus instead on documenting breadth and consistency. A dated activity log showing multiple science activities spread across a full semester demonstrates regular instruction far more effectively than a detailed hour-by-hour record showing two intense weeks of science followed by months of nothing.

Non-Core Subjects: Where Most Portfolios Fall Short

Art, Music, Health, and Physical Education are where portfolios fail. Not because families aren't providing instruction in these subjects — most are — but because parents don't think to document them systematically the way they document math or reading.

Here is what actually satisfies reviewers for each non-core subject:

Art: Work samples are the gold standard. Photographs of finished projects, scanned drawings, or printed craft results. Dated purchase receipts for art supplies reinforce that instruction was ongoing rather than a single afternoon project. If your child participates in a community art class, the enrollment receipt and any class output count.

Music: Dated practice logs work well for instrument learners. Printed sheet music annotated with lesson dates, or photos of a child at an instrument, are straightforward to compile. Attendance records from a music teacher or documentation of music theory curriculum progress are also appropriate.

Health: This is the most invisible subject in most portfolios because health education often happens through conversation rather than worksheets. A simple log documenting topics covered — nutrition, hygiene, safety, first aid, mental health — with the date and a brief description is sufficient. Any health curriculum workbooks, printed online lessons, or completed assignments qualify.

Physical Education: Organized sport participation (community leagues, recreational classes, team sports) should be documented with enrollment records, schedules, or photographs. For non-organized activity, a dated log noting the activity, duration, and approximate frequency is appropriate. PGCPS specifically accepts receipts for community center classes as valid PE documentation.

The common thread across all four: dated evidence that the instruction happened more than once.

When the Portfolio Review Finds a Problem

If a county reviewer determines your portfolio doesn't demonstrate regular, thorough instruction, they issue a written deficiency notice. COMAR gives you exactly 30 days from that notice to provide corrected documentation. If you cannot resolve the deficiency within 30 days, the law requires the child to be enrolled in a public or nonpublic school.

Deficiency notices are not common, but the mechanism exists and counties do use it. The most frequent triggers are:

• Missing coverage for one or more of the eight required subjects (usually a non-core subject)
• Evidence that instruction was concentrated into a short window rather than distributed across the semester
• Documentation that is too sparse or too informal to demonstrate systematic teaching

The 30-day window sounds generous. In practice, it requires either gathering retroactive documentation (photos, logs compiled after the fact) or demonstrating prospectively that the gap has been corrected. Having a pre-organized portfolio system makes either response faster and more credible.

Setting Up Your Documentation Before the Review

The families who have the smoothest county reviews are almost never the ones with the most instructional hours. They're the families who built a documentation system before their first day of instruction and maintained it consistently.

A Maryland-compliant portfolio organizes evidence by subject — all eight subjects — with dated artifacts spread across the semester. Each subject section should be immediately legible to a reviewer: clear, labeled, chronological.

If you're starting out or switching from umbrella oversight to direct county supervision, the Maryland Portfolio & Assessment Templates provide fillable, COMAR-aligned documentation for all eight required subjects — including dedicated logs for the non-core subjects that most families struggle to document. The templates are designed for digital submission, which most Maryland counties now accept or require.

The Core Rule to Remember

Maryland's home instruction standard has two requirements and only two: instruction must be regular (consistent across the school year) and thorough (substantive enough to constitute actual teaching across all eight subjects). Everything else — the portfolio review, the 15-day rule, the deficiency notice mechanism — is the enforcement architecture built around those two words.

If your portfolio demonstrates both, the review is straightforward. If it doesn't, no amount of good intention about what you actually taught will protect you when the reviewer asks to see evidence.

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