Vermont Homeschool Record Keeping: What the Law Requires and What to Keep

Vermont's homeschool law got significantly simpler in 2023, and a lot of families interpreted "simpler" as "I barely have to document anything anymore." That reading is incorrect, and it creates real problems.

Act 66 (H.461), effective July 1, 2023, eliminated the requirement to submit your Minimum Course of Study (MCOS) and End of Year Assessment (EOYA) to the Agency of Education for review. But it did not eliminate the requirement to create, complete, and retain those documents. The legal burden shifted — it moved from the state's desk to yours. If anything, that raises the stakes for your own record-keeping system.

What Act 66 Actually Changed

Before July 2023, Vermont had one of the more burdensome homeschool bureaucracies in New England. Parents submitted detailed curriculum narratives and end-of-year portfolios directly to the AOE, which then reviewed them against a subjective standard of "adequate progress." The review process was chronically backlogged, sometimes leaving families in a state of technical limbo for months.

Act 66 transformed the AOE's role from an oversight body into an administrative processing entity. When you file your annual Notice of Intent today, the AOE checks it for completeness — names, addresses, dates, signatures, required attestations — and issues an acknowledgment letter. They do not evaluate your curriculum. They do not read your EOYA. They do not contact you unless there is a procedural problem with your Notice.

What you still must attest to, under penalty of making a false legal statement:

• That you have developed an MCOS covering all required subjects
• That you will provide 175 days of equivalent instruction
• That you will conduct an annual assessment using one of the five approved methods
• That you will retain the assessment records

The attestation is the compliance mechanism now. Your records are the proof behind that attestation.

The Documentation Vermont Requires You to Keep

The Notice of Intent Acknowledgment

Every year, once the AOE processes your Notice of Intent, they issue an acknowledgment letter confirming your child is enrolled in a registered home study program. Keep this letter. It is the document you present to a public school principal if your child wants to participate in a district course or extracurricular activity under Vermont's integration law (16 V.S.A. § 563(24)). It is also the document that establishes your legal standing if truancy is ever alleged.

The Minimum Course of Study (MCOS)

You are required to develop a written MCOS before the start of the academic year. Vermont's required subjects under 16 V.S.A. §166b vary by the child's age:

Under age 13 — seven subject areas required:

• Reading, writing, and mathematics
• Vermont and U.S. history and government
• Natural sciences
• English, American, and other literature
• Fine arts
• Physical education
• Health education

Age 13 and older — four subject areas required:

• Reading, writing, and mathematics
• Vermont and U.S. history and government
• Natural sciences
• English, American, and other literature

Fine arts, PE, and health drop off at age 13. This is one of the most frequently missed compliance details in generic homeschool planning tools not built for Vermont.

The MCOS document does not need to follow a specific format. It can be a curriculum description, a scope and sequence from a commercial program, or a parent-written narrative mapping planned instruction to each subject area. What matters is that it exists, that it covers all required subjects for your child's age, and that you have it on file.

The End of Year Assessment (EOYA)

Vermont allows five assessment methods. Whichever you use, the resulting documentation must be retained for a minimum of two years.

1. Standardized test — retain the official score report from the testing service
2. Teacher assessment — retain the written evaluation report signed by the Vermont-certified teacher
3. Parent report and portfolio — retain the parent-written summary narrative plus at minimum four dated work samples per required MCOS subject
4. Online academy grades — retain the official report card, transcript, or grade printout from the accredited virtual program
5. GED or HiSET — retain the official passing score documentation

The two-year retention requirement is the legal floor. For high school students, retain everything permanently. Colleges, military recruiters, and employers conducting background checks may request transcripts years after graduation, and you will have no way to reconstruct records you no longer have.

Attendance Records

Vermont law requires 175 days of instruction equivalent to a public school day. There is no mandatory format for tracking this — you are not required to log hourly time blocks. A simple dated log, a monthly attendance calendar, or a learning log that records instructional activities by date all satisfy the requirement. What you need is a document that supports your attestation of 175 days if the question is ever raised.

When Documentation Gets Tested

Under normal circumstances, the AOE never looks at your internal records. They process your Notice of Intent and move on. Documentation becomes critical in three situations:

Returning to public school — When a homeschooled child re-enrolls in a Vermont public school, the district determines grade placement. A well-organized portfolio, particularly one that shows progression in the core subjects, gives the district a factual basis for appropriate placement. Without it, they make placement decisions with incomplete information, which usually disadvantages the student.

College applications — Vermont's public universities are generally receptive to homeschooled applicants, but they do require documentation. The University of Vermont is test-optional and asks for course descriptions and transcripts of any dual-enrollment or virtual coursework. Champlain College wants a parent-issued transcript with grades and course descriptions. Middlebury requires teacher recommendations and thorough transcripts. None of that is possible without systematic records going back through high school.

Vermont also offers state-funded dual enrollment through Act 77, which allows juniors and seniors to take free college courses at institutions including CCV, Vermont State University, and Champlain College. Accessing that program requires submitting an official high school transcript to the participating institution. Parents who have not been tracking coursework systematically discover this problem the hard way.

Legal disputes — Vermont family courts have seen cases where a non-homeschooling parent raises educational neglect as a custody argument. The homeschooling parent needs documentary evidence that the child is receiving legally compliant instruction. A professionally organized portfolio, showing dated work samples across all required MCOS subjects, is the most direct counter to that kind of claim.

Common Record-Keeping Mistakes

Waiting until spring to compile the EOYA — A portfolio assembled in the last two weeks of the school year looks like a portfolio assembled in the last two weeks of the school year. Work samples from three dates in May do not demonstrate instruction across 175 days. Documentation needs to happen throughout the year.

Discarding "extra" work samples — Many parents keep one worksheet per subject and throw away the rest. This leaves them unable to show progression. Keep at least one representative sample per subject per month, organized chronologically.

Using a generic planner not mapped to Vermont law — Etsy and Teachers Pay Teachers are full of homeschool planners that are aesthetically appealing and legally useless in Vermont. They do not track the age-13 subject threshold. They do not include sections for the EOYA parent narrative. They are built for a national audience, not for 16 V.S.A. §166b.

Ignoring the IPE requirement — If your child has not previously been enrolled in a Vermont public school or Vermont home study program and has a documented disability, you must include an Independent Professional Evidence (IPE) form with your Notice of Intent. Missing this delays processing and creates a gap in the legal record.

Conflating "we don't submit anymore" with "we don't have to have it" — Act 66 removed the submission requirement. It did not remove the underlying legal obligation to conduct and retain an annual assessment. The attestation you sign on the Notice of Intent is a legal statement. The records are the substance behind that statement.

Building a System That Doesn't Require Heroic Effort

The families with the most organized records are not the ones who spent a weekend in April frantically assembling binders. They are the ones who made documentation a 15-minute weekly habit — sorting the week's outputs, adding photos to a subject folder, jotting a few lines in a learning log.

Vermont's rules do not require hourly time logs, rigid grading rubrics, or formal lesson plan submissions. They require that you document what you taught, how you assessed it, and that you keep the results. The system you use — physical binders, cloud folders, dedicated homeschool software, or a well-organized printable template set — matters less than the consistency with which you use it.

If you want a system pre-built around Vermont's specific requirements — with age-bracketed MCOS checklists, a parent report template, attendance logs, and subject sections aligned to 16 V.S.A. §166b — the Vermont Portfolio & Assessment Templates provides all of that in one package.

Vermont's homeschool regulations sit in the moderate tier nationally — far less burdensome than New York's quarterly reporting system or Massachusetts' local superintendent approval process. But moderate regulation still requires real documentation. The attestation you sign every year is a legal commitment, and your record-keeping system is how you keep it.

See more United States homeschool guides →