Massachusetts Homeschool Curriculum Requirements: What You Must Teach

Massachusetts gives you wide freedom to choose how you teach, but not whether you cover certain subjects. The state specifies a list of required disciplines, and your education plan must demonstrate that your child will receive instruction in each of them. What trips up most families isn't the subjects themselves — it's not knowing where the line is between what the district can lawfully require and what it cannot.

The Statutory Required Subjects

Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 76, Section 1 is the foundational statute. It requires instruction in the following areas for all school-age children:

• Reading and writing
• Orthography (spelling) and grammar
• Arithmetic
• Geography
• History of the United States and the Constitution
• Duties of citizenship and civics
• Science and technology
• Health education
• Physical education
• Drawing and music (fine arts)
• Good behavior (character education)

These are not suggestions. Your home education plan must list each of these subject areas and explain how you will address them. That said, the law does not require you to replicate a public school classroom or follow a public school scope and sequence. You are free to use any curriculum, materials, or approach you choose, provided the subjects are covered.

How to Frame Subjects in Your Education Plan

The Care and Protection of Charles (1987) decision — the foundational Supreme Judicial Court ruling that governs Massachusetts homeschooling — makes clear that districts may verify which subjects you intend to teach, but they cannot dictate the specific materials, methods, or sequencing you use to teach them.

In practice, this means your education plan should map your chosen curriculum to the statutory subjects. A straightforward way to do this:

This kind of table tells the district exactly what subjects are covered without handing over a day-by-day lesson plan. That level of detail is not legally required, and providing it can create problems if your actual practice drifts from what you documented.

What Hours and Days Are Required

Along with subjects, Massachusetts specifies minimum instructional time:

• Elementary students: 900 hours per year across a 180-day school year
• Secondary students: 990 hours per year across a 180-day school year

Your education plan should include a statement affirming that you will meet these thresholds. You don't need to submit a time-log or daily attendance record at the start of the year. You do need to be able to demonstrate compliance through your end-of-year assessment.

What the District Cannot Require

This is where Massachusetts families get into trouble. Districts will sometimes push beyond the legal minimum, particularly in cities like Worcester and Boston. Knowing your rights:

Districts cannot require you to:

• Use the public school curriculum or textbooks
• Follow the exact sequence of the public school academic calendar
• Submit quarterly progress reports (unless you agreed to this in your education plan)
• Allow home visits by school officials (this was definitively settled in Brunelle v. Lynn Public Schools, 1998)
• Administer MCAS state tests

Districts can require you to:

• List the subjects you will teach and how they map to statutory requirements
• Describe the materials and resources you will use (at a general level — publisher names, curriculum titles)
• Provide a brief statement of parental competence
• Agree on an end-of-year assessment method

The distinction between "listing materials" and "surrendering your curriculum" matters. The Charles ruling states that district access to materials is permitted only to determine which subjects are taught and at what grade level — not to evaluate your pedagogical philosophy or dictate how you teach.

Choosing a Curriculum

Massachusetts does not maintain an approved curriculum list, and districts cannot require you to use state-approved materials. You have full discretion. Families use everything from structured programs (Abeka, Sonlight, Memoria Press) to eclectic combinations of library books, online courses, and community classes.

What matters legally is that you can name your materials in the education plan and map them to statutory subjects. A plan that says "we will use Khan Academy, the local library, and a co-op science class" is legally sufficient. A plan that says "we will learn things naturally as they come up" will likely face pushback, because it doesn't demonstrate how you'll address the required subject list.

If you're unsure how to frame your approach for district approval without over-committing to a rigid plan, the Massachusetts Legal Withdrawal Blueprint walks through exactly how to draft the curriculum section of your education plan — including how to describe informal and interest-led approaches in language that satisfies the Charles guidelines.

The Over-Reporting Problem

Worcester and Boston families in particular report pressure from district portals that prompt parents to provide far more detail than the law requires. One documented pattern: online forms with mandatory fields for daily schedules, specific textbook ISBNs, and lesson-by-lesson scope and sequence documents.

None of that is required by the Charles decision. The fix is to submit your education plan as a standalone PDF document rather than filling out the district's portal fields. Both Boston Public Schools and most other major districts will accept a submitted PDF. Your plan speaks directly to the four legal prongs — subjects, hours, materials, competence, and assessment method — without surrendering extra data.

Annual Assessment Covers Curriculum Progress

At the end of each year, Massachusetts requires a "mutually agreed upon" assessment to verify the child is meeting minimum educational standards. This assessment indirectly confirms that your curriculum requirements were met. Options include:

• Standardized tests (Iowa Test of Basic Skills, Stanford 10, CAT)
• A portfolio of dated work samples
• A narrative progress report written by the parent
• Evaluation by a qualified third party

The method must be agreed upon as part of your education plan, not unilaterally imposed by the district afterward. If the district tries to require MCAS or a specific commercial test after approving your plan, that is an unlawful modification.

Getting the curriculum section right from the start — specific enough to satisfy the district, strategic enough to preserve your autonomy — is the key to a smooth approval and years of friction-free homeschooling in Massachusetts.

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