North Dakota tests home educated children at four separate grades, which is more than any state we have written up in this series. The question that actually matters is what the state does when a score comes back low, and North Dakota’s answer is not the one most parents brace for.
Below the thirtieth percentile, a multidisciplinary team assesses the child for a learning disability. Nothing is revoked and nobody is sent back to school.
North Dakota Century Code chapter 15.1-23
Read what that actually is. The first move is a diagnosis, not a penalty. A remediation plan follows only where the team looks and finds no disability. So the most tested state in this series responds to a disappointing result by asking whether the child has been getting the help they needed all along, which is a question a family may have been trying to get somebody to ask for years.
What happens after a low score, in order
- The test comes back below the thirtieth percentile
The basic composite score is the one that matters here. One low subject score is not this. - A multidisciplinary team assesses your child
For a learning disability. This is the special education assessment route, and it is the same expertise a classroom child would be referred into. - If a disability is identified, that is the answer
The finding is about your child’s needs, and it changes what support they are owed rather than whether you may go on teaching them. - Only if no disability is found does a remediation plan begin
Filed with the superintendent. This ordering is the whole point and it is easy to miss in a summary. - The plan ends two ways
A basic composite at or above the thirtieth percentile, or a demonstration that your child accomplished one year of academic progress. Either one closes it.
What a low score does not do.
It does not end your home education, it does not return your child to a classroom, and it does not put your qualification in question. Nothing in this chapter revokes anything for a test result. If you have been told otherwise, whoever told you was describing a different state.
The testing itself
| The detail | What North Dakota asks |
|---|---|
| Which years | Grades 4, 6, 8 and 10 |
| Which test | A nationally normed achievement test |
| Who administers it | A North Dakota certified teacher |
| Who pays | The district, if your child sits it through the district |
| The line that triggers something | A basic composite below the thirtieth percentile |
The qualification question, answered plainly
The supervising parent needs a high school diploma or a GED. Here is the part that gets left out of summaries, and leaving it out talks families out of something they are entitled to do: a parent without either one may still supervise home education in North Dakota. The consequence is not refusal. It is company.
A licensed teacher monitors for the first two years. If the child’s basic composite comes in below the fiftieth percentile during that period, monitoring continues at least one more year, until a score at or above that line. Note that this is a different number doing a different job from the thirtieth percentile above: one governs how long somebody helps you, the other asks a question about your child.
What you file, and when
The statement of intent goes to the superintendent of your child’s district of residence, or to the county superintendent where the district employs none. At least five days before you begin, or within fourteen days of establishing your child’s residence in a district, and once every year after that.
If the form you are holding says fourteen days, file early and stop worrying about it.
The state’s own printed form and several circulating copies of the chapter still carry a fourteen day figure for the advance filing, while the department’s current guidance and the districts both say five. Filing sooner than the law requires has never been a problem for anybody. The fourteen days is live and unambiguous for one situation, which is a move into a new district, so if you have just arrived in North Dakota, use it.
Five things travel with the statement, and two of them surprise people:
- Your child’s name, address, date of birth and grade level
The routine part. - Your name, address and qualifications
This is where the diploma or GED is recorded, and where monitoring is set up if you do not hold one. - A list of public school courses and activities your child will take part in
North Dakota asks up front rather than later, so think about it before you file rather than after. - A copy of the immunization record, or the exemption
Requested with the statement itself, so get it from the school in your withdrawal letter. - Proof of your child’s identity
A certified birth certificate or equivalent. This one catches families out every year, and a certified copy is not something you can produce on the afternoon you need it.
What the year has to contain
At least four hours of instruction per school day, and at least 175 days a year. The subject coverage tracks what the state expects of any student at that level, language arts, mathematics, science and social studies through the middle years, with the wider high school pattern above that.
Worried about a test that has not happened yet?
Fifteen minutes on the phone covers which grades are tested, what the thirtieth percentile does and does not mean, and how a partly finished year at the public school counts toward the days. No records required to have the conversation, and deciding against it costs nothing.
Where North Dakota sits in the series
| State | What a low test score sets off |
|---|---|
| Oregon | Below the fifteenth percentile, another examination inside a year |
| West Virginia | Nothing, if the child improved on last year’s result |
| Montana | There is no test, and the parent is the named evaluator |
| Maine | Nothing. The statute sets no percentile at all |
| North Dakota | An assessment of the child for a learning disability, before anything else |
What leaving actually requires
- A withdrawal letter to the school, in writing
Name the last day of attendance and deliver it so receipt can be shown. The school keeps your child on its roll until somebody tells it otherwise, and an unexplained empty seat is what starts a truancy call. - The certified birth certificate, ordered early
Proof of identity travels with the statement of intent. Order it the week you decide, not the week you file. - The immunization record
Ask for it in the withdrawal letter. It is one of the five things the statement needs and the school has it already. - The statement of intent, five days ahead
To your district superintendent, or the county superintendent where there is none. Then again once a year. - The transcript and course descriptions
Request them in the same withdrawal letter, along with anything half finished. Schools release records readily while the student is fresh in mind and slowly a year later. - A plan for the testing years
Grades 4, 6, 8 and 10, administered by a certified teacher. Knowing which of those your child is walking into removes most of the dread.
Doing it in order
Order the certified birth certificate first
It is the only item on the list with a turnaround time you do not control, and it is the one that delays families.
Pick the last day and the first day
The last day at the public school and the first day of instruction at home, ideally adjacent, so the student is never marked absent and never off every roll at once.
Send the withdrawal letter so receipt can be shown
Email the principal and the registrar together; the reply is your proof. Ask in the same letter for the transcript, immunization records, and course descriptions for any course in progress.
File the statement of intent with everything attached
At least five days before instruction begins. An incomplete statement is the common reason a district comes back with questions.
Diary next year now
The statement repeats once each year, and the testing years arrive on their own schedule.
The withdrawal letter, ready to send
Short is correct. This goes to the school your child attends now, addressed to the principal and copied to the registrar. The statement of intent is a separate document, goes to the superintendent, and does not replace this one.
Dear Principal [name],
This letter is formal notice that our child, [student full name], date of birth [DOB], currently in grade [grade], is withdrawn from [school] effective [last day of attendance]. Beginning [start date], [he/she/they] will receive home education, and a statement of intent is being filed with the [district] superintendent under North Dakota Century Code chapter 15.1-23.
Please update your enrollment records accordingly and confirm receipt of this letter by reply. Please also send a complete transcript, the immunization record, and course descriptions for any course in progress to [address / email].
Thank you for your help.
[Your name]
[Address]
[Telephone]
What we can and cannot tell you
High School of America is an accredited private school based in Florida, not a North Dakota school. This page has given the testing grades, both percentile figures and the different jobs they do, the order in which an assessment and a remediation plan happen, the five things that travel with a statement of intent, the four hours and 175 days, and the fact that a parent without a diploma or a GED may still supervise. What it will not do is tell you which route to take, or suggest that enrolling here satisfies or replaces the statement of intent. That statement is owed to your superintendent whatever school your child attends next, and the choice belongs to your household, least of all to a school that gains from your enrollment.
One limit worth stating rather than implying. Describing what a multidisciplinary assessment is for is not the same as predicting what yours will find or how it will feel, and nothing here is an opinion about your child. Ask the district in writing what their process looks like, and keep the reply.
The department’s guidance sits at the North Dakota home education FAQ, the chapter itself is at Century Code chapter 15.1-23, and the statement of intent is form SFN 16909. The wider picture sits on the requirements state by state, and if you are early enough to still be deciding, the three-route comparison weighs this against staying exactly where you are.