Unschooling in Washington State: Declaration, Assessment, and Rules

Unschooling is legal in Washington state, but only inside the state’s home-based instruction framework. Washington doesn’t recognize “unschooling” as its own category. If you want to let your child learn through self-directed exploration rather than a structured curriculum, you do it as a home-based instructor under RCW 28A.200.010, which means meeting a parent qualification, filing a yearly Declaration of Intent, covering the required subjects for 1,000 hours or 180 days, and assessing your child every year.¹ Compulsory attendance applies to every child age eight through eighteen, and home-based instruction is one of the ways parents satisfy it.² The flexibility unschooling needs is there. You just have to know where it lives.

Qualifying as the Instructing Parent

Before you can teach your own child at home, you need to meet one of four qualification pathways. These are alternatives, not a checklist.¹

You have earned at least 45 quarter-credit hours (roughly 30 semester hours) from an accredited postsecondary institution. The credits do not have to be in education.
You have completed a course in home-based instruction at a postsecondary institution or vocational-technical school.
A Washington-certificated teacher supervises your program, averaging at least one contact hour per week with your child and evaluating progress throughout the year.
The superintendent of your local school district reviews your qualifications and deems you sufficiently qualified. This is at the superintendent’s discretion.

Most families who don’t have the college credits lean on the certificated teacher route. That teacher doesn’t just sign off at the end of the year; they help plan objectives, meet with your child regularly, and write progress evaluations. Superintendent approval exists but depends entirely on your district’s willingness and must be renewed.

Filing the Declaration of Intent

Each school year you must file a signed Declaration of Intent with the superintendent of the public school district where you live. The form names each child who will be instructed at home, their age, and whether a certificated person will supervise.¹

The deadline is September 15, or within two weeks of the start of any public school quarter, trimester, or semester if you’re beginning mid-year.¹ Keep a copy of what you filed and proof of when you filed it. If a truancy question ever surfaces, that proof is your first line of defense.

Required Subjects and Hours

Home-based instruction has to cover the same scope of subjects as public schools. The statute lists them: occupational education, science, mathematics, language, social studies, history, health, reading, writing, spelling, and activities that develop an appreciation of art and music. The annual program must consist of at least 1,000 hours or 180 days of instruction.¹

The state doesn’t dictate curriculum, pedagogy, or schedule. That is the room unschooling lives in. A child who spends the morning baking (math, chemistry, reading a recipe), the afternoon at a nature preserve (science, health), and the evening with historical fiction (history, language, reading) is covering required subjects. The catch is proving it later. Keep a running log that maps the activities your child chooses onto the statutory subject list and tracks the time. You’ll want it for your own records regardless, and it’s the thing that makes an unschooled program legible to anyone who asks.

The Annual Assessment

Every home-instructed student must be assessed each year. There are two options: a standardized achievement test approved by the State Board of Education and administered by a qualified individual, or a written academic progress assessment completed by a certificated person currently working in education.¹ The State Board accepts any standardized test reviewed by the Buros Center for Testing, which covers essentially every commercial achievement test on the market.³

For unschooling families, the certificated-person assessment is usually the better fit. Child-led learning often produces uneven standardized test results, especially in early years, and a written evaluation lets a qualified reviewer consider the whole program rather than a single morning’s bubble sheet.

One provision in the statute carries real weight. If testing or assessment shows the child is not making reasonable progress consistent with their age or developmental stage, the parent must make a good-faith effort to address the deficiency.¹ The statute doesn’t define “good faith effort,” which gives families room to adapt, but it also means a court could evaluate the question if non-compliance is alleged.

You don’t submit test scores or assessments to the school district on your own. The results do have to become part of your child’s permanent records, kept alongside immunization records and any other educational records, because all of it must be forwarded if your child ever transfers to a public or private school.⁴¹

What Non-Compliance Triggers

Washington treats failure to meet any of the duties in RCW 28A.200.010 — the Declaration of Intent, the subjects, the hours, the annual assessment — the same as a child failing to attend school without valid justification.¹ Public school officials must report non-compliance to the local truancy enforcement officer,⁵ and the district can file a truancy petition in court.⁶ File on time, assess annually, keep records.

If You Don’t Meet the Parent Qualifications

Some families skip the home-based instruction framework entirely by enrolling through an approved private school’s extension program under RCW 28A.195.010.⁷ A certificated employee of the private school supervises the program, averaging at least one contact hour per week with each student and evaluating their progress. No single teacher can supervise more than thirty extension students.

Extension families follow the private school’s requirements rather than filing a Declaration of Intent with the public district. This can appeal to parents who don’t independently meet the qualification pathways or who want built-in structure. You trade autonomy for support, and the private school’s educational philosophy may or may not match a child-led approach, so ask before you enroll.

Options for Teens and the Diploma Question

Running Start is open to homeschooled students. To participate, your child enrolls through the local public school district, submits a completed Running Start Enrollment Verification Form for each college term, and holds 11th or 12th grade standing as determined by the district’s grade-placement policy.⁸ They don’t need to attend public high school classes to take part. Running Start lets students earn college credit tuition-free at community or technical colleges while that coursework also counts toward high school.

Home-based instruction students can also attend public school part-time or access ancillary services. The Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction maintains a form for requesting part-time attendance, and specifics vary by district, so call your local district office to find out what courses, sports, and activities are open.⁴

Washington does not issue a state diploma to home-instructed students, and homeschooled students aren’t required to meet the public school graduation requirements such as state assessments or specific credit totals.⁸ You decide when your child has completed their program and issue a diploma on behalf of your home-based program.

1
Washington State Legislature. RCW 28A.200.010 – Home-Based Instruction – Duties of Parents
2
Washington State Legislature. RCW 28A.225.010 – Attendance Mandatory – Age – Exceptions
3
Washington State Board of Education. Home-Based Instruction FAQs
4
Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. Home-Based Instruction
5
Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. Washington State Laws Regulating Home-Based Instruction
6
Washington State Legislature. RCW 28A.225.015 – Attendance – Procedures
7
Washington State Legislature. RCW 28A.195.010 – Private Schools – Rights – Duties
8
Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. Running Start FAQ