Nebraska Homeschool Curriculum Requirements and Required Subjects

Nebraska's reputation as a "moderate regulation" state has shifted significantly since 2024. A lot of what parents assume is required — submitting curriculum plans, listing textbooks, naming their teachers — was stripped from the law by Legislative Bill 1027. What's left is a short list of required subjects and a mandate to log your hours. That's essentially it.

Understanding the distinction between what Nebraska actually requires versus what outdated guides still tell you will save hours of unnecessary paperwork and prevent you from voluntarily handing the state information it has no right to.

The Five Required Subject Areas

Nebraska requires that home instruction lead to the acquisition of basic skills in five subject areas:

1. Language arts — reading, writing, grammar, composition
2. Mathematics
3. Science
4. Social studies — history, geography, civics
5. Health

That's the complete list under Nebraska's Rule 13. The state does not specify which textbooks or digital platforms you must use. It does not prescribe how much time to allocate to each subject. It does not require any particular pedagogical approach — classical, Charlotte Mason, unit studies, unschooling-adjacent, online curriculum, or any combination.

The health requirement trips up some parents. It doesn't mean a full semester-long health class. Age-appropriate health education woven into your regular curriculum — nutrition, hygiene, physical activity, basic anatomy — satisfies the requirement. There's no minimum hour allocation attached to any individual subject; only the total annual hours (1,032 for K-8, 1,080 for 9-12) apply across all subjects combined.

What Nebraska No Longer Requires You to Submit

Before LB 1027 passed in April 2024, Nebraska parents had to submit a detailed scope and sequence of their curriculum to the Nebraska Department of Education. They also had to name all instructional monitors (anyone helping teach the children) and provide information about their educational backgrounds.

All of that is gone.

As of the 2024-2025 school year:

• You do not submit a curriculum plan or description to the NDE
• You do not list textbooks, online platforms, or educational materials
• You do not name instructors or document their qualifications
• You do not provide grades or report cards to the state
• You do not submit standardized test results

When you file your annual Rule 13 paperwork (Form A and Form B), you provide your dates of operation and a written assurance that the person monitoring instruction is qualified to do so. That's all the curriculum-related information the state receives.

If you're using an NDE online portal that still displays a "curriculum" data entry field — don't fill it in. The portal hasn't been fully updated since LB 1027, but the state's FAQ documentation confirms the field is no longer required. Completing it is entirely voluntary, and there's no legal reason to do so.

Keeping Curriculum Records Internally

Just because the state doesn't require you to submit curriculum documentation doesn't mean you shouldn't maintain it. There are several practical reasons to keep solid internal records:

Future public school re-enrollment: If your child ever returns to a public or private school, the receiving school will want to know what grade level your child is working at and what subjects they've covered. A curriculum portfolio makes placement smoother.

College admissions: Universities don't receive curriculum reports from the NDE — because there aren't any. Instead, they ask parents to provide a curriculum synopsis directly. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln, for example, requires a "detailed curriculum synopsis describing the courses that parallel the 16 core requirements" as part of the admissions packet for homeschooled students. Building that document becomes much easier if you've kept notes throughout the years.

Your own accountability: A written curriculum plan — even a loose one — helps you stay organized and ensures you're actually covering all five required subjects across the year. Without any structure, it's easy to spend most of your instructional hours on subjects your child enjoys while quietly neglecting others.

Choosing a Curriculum

Nebraska places no restrictions on curriculum choice. Families use everything from boxed all-in-one programs to completely self-assembled materials. Some popular frameworks used by Nebraska families:

Structured full-curriculum options: Abeka, BJU Press, Sonlight, and Classical Conversations provide complete, rigorous year-by-year programs covering all five required subjects. Classical Conversations in particular has active communities in Omaha, Lincoln, Grand Island, and Kearney.

Secular structured options: Time4Learning, Connections Academy, and Oak Meadow are popular with families who want a secular framework with built-in record-keeping.

Subject-by-subject assembly: Many families mix and match — a strong math program like Saxon or RightStart, a literature-based language arts approach, and unit studies for science and history. Nebraska's deregulated environment makes this approach entirely viable.

Online and dual enrollment: High school students can take courses through Southeast Community College (at significant tuition discounts), the University of Nebraska High School (UNHS) for accredited individual courses, or through the Nebraska State College System's dual-credit programs. Hours from accredited online courses count toward the annual instructional hour requirement.

Documentation to Maintain at Home

Even without state reporting requirements, building a documentation habit protects your family:

• Daily or weekly logs of subjects covered and approximate hours
• Work samples — particularly for language arts and math — across each school year
• Curriculum receipts and descriptions of programs you've purchased or used
• A year-end portfolio or summary for each grade level

This documentation serves as your defense if anyone ever questions your compliance. It also forms the foundation of a high school transcript if you're teaching older students. Since Nebraska parents issue their own diplomas and the NDE does not issue one, the transcript is entirely your creation — and courts, universities, and military branches all recognize parent-issued transcripts from Nebraska exempt schools as legitimate.

Nebraska gives homeschooling families genuinely broad academic freedom. The five required subjects are a floor, not a ceiling. The only real constraint is your annual hour total, and even that becomes manageable once you understand how to log time accurately.

If you're just starting out and want to make sure your curriculum choices satisfy the five required subjects while keeping your records organized, the Nebraska Legal Withdrawal Blueprint includes guidance on building a compliant record-keeping system that also doubles as a college admissions portfolio.

Pick a curriculum you and your child can sustain. Log your hours. Cover the five subjects. That's the whole compliance picture.

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