Vermont Home Study Law Changes 2023: What Act 166b Actually Changed

Vermont's home study law underwent its most significant revision in years when H.0461, now codified as Act 166b, took effect on July 1, 2023. If you're reading old forum posts, outdated state summaries, or guides written before that date, you're getting instructions for a system that no longer exists. Here is what actually changed, what stayed the same, and what the 2023 update means for families filing today.

What Changed: The End of MCOS and EOYA Submission

The biggest shift in the 2023 update is the elimination of the requirement to submit your Minimum Course of Study (MCOS) and End of Year Assessment (EOYA) documentation to the Vermont Agency of Education.

Under the old system, Vermont home study families had to:

1. Submit a detailed MCOS narrative describing their planned curriculum for the coming year
2. Submit an EOYA report at the end of the year confirming that the student had completed the planned program

The AOE's Home Study staff — a team of roughly 1.4 full-time equivalents — was responsible for reviewing thousands of these submissions annually. The review was largely procedural, but it created a significant administrative burden on both families and the agency. Families spent time writing narratives that would be glanced at for completeness; staff spent time confirming paperwork they weren't substantively evaluating.

Act 166b eliminated both requirements entirely. Under the current system:

• You develop an MCOS privately and keep it for your own records
• You conduct a year-end assessment and retain those records privately
• You do not submit either document to the AOE

What Replaced Submission: The Attestation System

Vermont shifted from submission to attestation. On your annual Notice of Enrollment, you sign legally binding statements affirming that you are doing what the law requires. The three core attestations under 16 V.S.A. § 166b are:

Instructional days attestation. You attest that you will provide your child with the equivalent of at least 175 days of instruction during the academic year.

MCOS attestation. You attest that you have developed a Minimum Course of Study covering all required subjects. If your child has a documented disability, you also attest that the MCOS includes necessary adaptations. You are not submitting the MCOS — you are swearing you have one.

Assessment attestation. You attest that you will conduct an annual end-of-year assessment using one of the five approved methods and will retain the resulting records for at least two years.

The legal consequence of these attestations is that the accountability has shifted entirely onto the parent. You are signing a legal document stating that you are complying. If you are later found not to be complying — through a custody dispute, a DCF investigation, or a truancy proceeding — the attestation you signed is evidence that you knew what was required and chose not to do it. The practical implication is that you actually need to keep records, even though no one is asking to see them.

What Stayed the Same

The 2023 update did not change the substantive requirements of home study in Vermont. These elements remain exactly as they were:

Annual enrollment. Every home study family must file a Notice of Enrollment with the AOE each year. This is still an annual requirement — not a one-time filing.

10-business-day lead time. The Notice of Enrollment must be submitted at least 10 business days before the home study program begins. This waiting period still exists and the truancy risk for families who skip it is unchanged.

Required subjects. The subject requirements under 16 V.S.A. § 906 are unchanged. Students under 13 must receive instruction in reading, writing, math, Vermont and U.S. history, natural sciences, literature, fine arts, PE, and health. Students 13 and older are no longer required to cover fine arts, PE, and health.

175 instructional days. The 175-day minimum is unchanged.

Five assessment options. The approved assessment methods — parent portfolio with work samples, Vermont-certified teacher evaluation, standardized testing, online academy grades, and GED — remain the same.

Compulsory attendance ages. Vermont's compulsory attendance law (16 V.S.A. § 1121) still covers ages 6 through 16.

IPE form for new special-needs students. The requirement for an Independent Professional Evidence form when a student with a documented disability enrolls in Vermont home study for the first time is unchanged.

The AOE's Role Under the New System

A common misunderstanding about Act 166b is that it removed the AOE from the process entirely. It did not. The AOE is still the processor and record-keeper for home study enrollment. They still:

• Receive and review Notice of Enrollment submissions for completeness
• Issue the official Home Study Acknowledgment Letter that legally authorizes your program
• Maintain records of which students are enrolled in Vermont home study programs
• Can be contacted if districts raise truancy concerns to verify enrollment status

What the AOE no longer does is review curriculum content or evaluate your assessment documentation. They process the enrollment form and issue the acknowledgment. The substantive educational decisions — what to teach, how to assess, what constitutes progress — are entirely yours.

Practical Consequences for Families Who Filed Before 2023

If you were homeschooling in Vermont before July 2023 and have been operating under the old system, the transition to the new system is straightforward. You no longer need to write a detailed MCOS narrative for the AOE — you maintain that document privately. You no longer submit your EOYA report — you keep it in your records.

What you do need to do is ensure your record-keeping is actually adequate, now that the discipline of annual submission isn't there. Under the old system, the EOYA submission deadline created a natural forcing function — you had to have something ready to submit. Under the new attestation system, that external deadline is gone. Families who relied on the submission deadline to organize their documentation need to build internal systems to replace it.

Implications for Withdrawal Timing

One aspect of the 2023 changes that affects families deciding to start home study mid-year: because the AOE is now only reviewing forms for completeness rather than reading curriculum narratives, the processing time has generally shortened. The legal window is still 10 business days, but many families report acknowledgments arriving faster under the streamlined system.

That said, do not count on a fast turnaround. The 10-business-day wait period is a legal requirement regardless of how quickly the AOE processes your specific form. If you pull your child from school before the acknowledgment arrives, the absences are unexcused — and the 2023 changes did not alter that rule at all.

Navigating the current Vermont home study system — especially if you're withdrawing from public school mid-year and need to get the sequence right — is what the Vermont Legal Withdrawal Blueprint is built for. It's written around the post-Act 66 system, not the old MCOS-submission framework, and covers the Notice of Enrollment, the 10-day waiting period, the school withdrawal letter, and the records you need to build and keep.

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