North Dakota Homeschool Portfolio: What to Keep and How to Organize It

Most North Dakota homeschool parents start the school year with good intentions about keeping records — and end it with a pile of worksheets in a kitchen drawer and no idea whether any of it counts. That's the gap this post closes.

NDCC Chapter 15.1-23 does not require you to submit a portfolio to anyone. For Tiers 2 and 3, it does require at least 175 instructional days at four hours per day; the Private School Option uses 180 instructional days. If your child needs testing, a transcript, college applications, or a scholarship, organized records are what make all of that possible. A North Dakota homeschool portfolio is really just a deliberate documentation habit built around what the law actually demands.

What North Dakota Law Actually Requires You to Keep

The statute itself is leaner than most parents expect. Under NDCC 15.1-23, a home education parent must:

• Provide at least 175 days of instruction per school year under Tiers 2 and 3; the Private School Option requires 180 instructional days
• Count at least 4 hours of instruction per day for each counted instructional day
• Cover the required subjects: reading, language arts, math, science, social studies, health, and physical education
• Include North Dakota Studies at grade 4 and grade 8, and Native American history in applicable high-school history requirements under SB 2304
• For Tiers 2 and 3, file a Statement of Intent (SFN 16909) with your local superintendent at least 14 days before you begin, with a 5-day waiting period; the Private School Option uses private-school paperwork instead

The law does not specify a format for records. The checked requirements do not set a portfolio rubric or a fixed annual submission date. Retain the annual record and provide it when legally requested — meaning if your local superintendent ever questions whether your child met the applicable instructional and subject requirements, you need something to show.

That's why a portfolio matters: not because it's legally required in form, but because it's your evidence.

The Core Documents Every ND Homeschool Portfolio Needs

For the applicable track, keep these in your binder every year:

Attendance log. Date, hours of instruction, and subjects covered. A simple spreadsheet works fine. Tiers 2 and 3 need 175 days × 4 hours = 700 instructional hours minimum per year; the Private School Option uses 180 instructional days at four hours per day. Track it as you go — reconstructing it from memory in May is miserable.

Subject coverage tracker. A running record showing that each required subject received regular instruction throughout the year. This doesn't need to be a daily lesson log. A monthly summary by subject is sufficient and takes about 10 minutes to update.

Work samples. These are the actual artifacts — completed math pages, writing assignments, science lab notes, book reports. ND law doesn't mandate a specific number. A reasonable standard is 4-6 samples per subject per semester, drawn across the year so they show progression. Label each with the date, subject, and grade level.

Filed paperwork. For Tiers 2 and 3, keep a copy of the SFN 16909 you submitted, along with the date filed and confirmation from the superintendent's office. The Private School Option uses private-school paperwork; keep that filing record instead.

If you're a monitored parent (no high school diploma or GED), you also need to document your supervising teacher's at-least-one-hour weekly direct contact during the first two years. Keep a log of dates and the teacher's contact information.

How to Structure a Homeschool Portfolio Binder

The goal is a binder someone else could pick up and understand in five minutes. Divide it into these sections:

Section 1 — Annual overview. Your applicable filed paperwork, your curriculum plan or educational philosophy statement, and the grade level for each subject.

Section 2 — Attendance. Your 175-day Tier 2/3 log or 180-day Private School Option log, organized by month. Total the hours at the bottom of each monthly page so you can see at a glance whether you're on track.

Section 3 — Subjects. One tab per subject. Behind each tab: your subject coverage tracker and the work samples for that subject. File samples chronologically within each tab, earliest at the back.

Section 4 — Assessments. Test scores (grades 4, 6, 8, and 10 for tested Tier 2 and Tier 3 students, unless a qualifying exemption applies), any standardized test prep materials, and for high schoolers, course descriptions and credit hour logs.

Section 5 — Special documentation. Monitored parent direct-contact logs, any correspondence with the superintendent, dual enrollment paperwork, scholarship applications (SFN 60374 for the ND Academic/CTE Scholarship).

A 2-inch D-ring binder handles a full school year comfortably for elementary. High school portfolios — especially if you're building toward a notarized transcript for scholarship purposes — benefit from their own dedicated binder per year.

The North Dakota Portfolio & Assessment Templates include pre-built versions of all these tracking forms, structured specifically around the 175-day requirement and ND's subject mandates. It takes the blank-page problem out of getting started.

Elementary vs. High School: What Changes

Elementary portfolios (K–8) are primarily about demonstrating subject coverage and instruction time. The documentation is straightforward: attendance, subject logs, work samples. For grade 4 and grade 8 specifically, include evidence of the applicable North Dakota Studies instruction — such as geography, state history, agriculture, or civics work. High-school records should also capture Native American history where required under SB 2304. These grades also trigger testing for tested Tier 2 and Tier 3 students, unless a qualifying exemption applies.

High school portfolios (grades 9–12) require a different layer: credit hours. North Dakota has specific graduation credit requirements for homeschoolers:

• 4 ELA credits
• 2 Math credits
• 2 Science credits
• 4 Social Studies credits
• 0.5 Health credits
• 1.5 PE credits

A credit in a core academic subject equals 120 instructional hours. Sciences and CTE courses require 150 hours per credit. Your portfolio needs to document hours per course, not just days of school. Keep a course-specific log that shows the date, topic covered, and time spent. At the end of the year, total the hours and record the course description — this becomes the source material for your transcript.

For the ND Academic/CTE Scholarship (up to $6,000), you'll need a notarized transcript using SFN 60374. That form requires course names, credit hours, and grades. Your high school portfolio documentation is exactly what makes filling it out possible — you either have the numbers or you don't.

Testing at grade 10 is also required for tested Tier 2 and Tier 3 students, unless a qualifying exemption applies. Keep your test scores in the portfolio with the date administered and the name of the ND state-certified teacher who administered the test.

End-of-Year Documentation: What to Do in May and June

End of year is when parents realize they've been meaning to file things properly since September. Here's how to close out a school year cleanly:

1. Tally your attendance log. For Tiers 2 and 3, confirm you've hit 175 days and 700 total hours; the Private School Option uses 180 instructional days at four hours per day. If you're short, you have time to add instruction days before the school year ends.

2. Pull your final work samples. You want samples from later in the year showing where your child landed, not just where they started. Include one piece per subject from the final month.

3. Write course descriptions (high school). One paragraph per subject describing what was covered, what curriculum or materials you used, and what the final assessment looked like. Do this while the year is fresh.

4. Finalize credit hour logs (high school). Total hours per course. Round down to the nearest half-credit. Document any co-op, dual enrollment, or outside courses with their own hour logs.

5. File everything and start a new binder. Don't cram year two into year one's binder. Keep each school year as its own archive. If your child's records are ever needed years later — for a scholarship, a college application, a military enlistment — you want to be able to pull a specific year without digging through everything.

Keep records through graduation and for later scholarship, college, military, or re-enrollment needs; ask each institution or agency about any specific retention period it expects.

The One Thing That Trips Up Qualified Parents at Testing Time

For tested Tier 2 and Tier 3 students, North Dakota testing occurs in grades 4, 6, 8, and 10. The test must be administered by a ND state-certified teacher — not by you, not by a friend, and not by an online service that doesn't verify teacher credentials in North Dakota. This catches parents off guard when they've been using a national testing service that's legal in other states but not compliant here.

Find your testing teacher before December of a testing year. NDHSA and local homeschool co-ops keep lists of certified teachers willing to administer tests. Your portfolio should have the teacher's name and certification number on file so you can verify compliance if needed.

The test score itself — and whether it is at or above the 30th percentile — determines next steps. At or above 30th percentile: no below-30th process is triggered. Below 30th percentile: the law requires a multidisciplinary evaluation; if no disability is identified, the parent prepares and files a remediation plan with the advice and consent of an ESPB-licensed teacher. For monitored parents, below 50th percentile extends the monitoring period. Keep all of this in your portfolio's assessment section with the original score report.

Documentation doesn't have to be complicated, but it does have to be deliberate. The parents who struggle at testing time, transcript time, or scholarship time are usually the ones who thought they'd figure it out later. Building the portfolio as you go — one attendance entry, one work sample, one subject note at a time — takes about 15 minutes a week and eliminates the end-of-year scramble entirely.

The North Dakota Portfolio & Assessment Templates give you every tracking form pre-built for ND requirements — attendance logs calibrated for 175 days, subject coverage trackers for all required subjects, high school credit hour logs, and a notarized transcript template. If you'd rather start organized than retrofit the year, that's what it's for.

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