Delaware Online Homeschool
Delaware asks something no neighbouring state asks. To home school here you do not file a notice of intent, you register a nonpublic school with the Delaware Department of Education and enroll your own child in it. It sounds heavier than it is. Once that account exists, Delaware asks for two dates a year and nothing else.
Listen: what Delaware actually asks of a family teaching at home.
What Delaware homeschool requirements actually are
Compulsory attendance in Delaware runs from age 5, if the child turns 5 on or before 31 August, through age 18. A child of that age has to be enrolled in a public school or a nonpublic school. Home schooling in Delaware is the second of those, formally: your home education program is the nonpublic school, registered with DDOE, with your child enrolled in it.
What Delaware then requires each year is short enough to say in two lines — and that is the whole annual obligation.
Everything Delaware asks you to file
30 September
Enrollment report
A statement of pupil enrollment as of the last school day in September, filed through your DDOE account.
31 July
Attendance report
End-of-year attendance for the school year just finished, filed the same way.
What Delaware does not require
This is the part families are usually surprised by, and it is worth being precise about because a great deal of general home schooling advice online describes states that ask for far more:
No standardized testing.
No portfolio to assemble or submit.
No external evaluator to hire or book.
No teacher qualifications. The supervising parent does not need a degree or a credential.
Compare that with Pennsylvania immediately to the north, where a home education program means a notarised affidavit before you start, a portfolio kept through the year, an evaluator’s certification by 30 June and standardized testing in three grades. If you are moving between the two, the change of pace is real, and you can read what Pennsylvania K-12 online home school asks of a family before you assume the process travels.
Pick one
The three kinds of Delaware homeschool, and which one you want
Delaware recognises three arrangements. Most families reading this want the first.
Single-family homeschool
Your child is educated primarily by you, mostly in your own home. You register the school, you file the two reports, and that is the arrangement. This is the ordinary path for a family running an online homeschool in Delaware.
Multi-family homeschool
Children from more than one family, taught primarily by their own parents, in one or several homes or another facility. Delaware defines it by the children not all being brother and sister. A multi-family homeschool appoints a liaison who handles registration, enrollment and reporting for the whole group, so the September and July filings run through one person rather than each household separately.
Coordinated with the district
The third option requires written approval from the district superintendent and a commitment to teach the same subjects taught in the public schools. It is worth knowing it exists so you can recognise it if someone recommends it, and worth knowing that it is not the arrangement DDOE recognises for home schooling. Families who choose it take on a district relationship the other two options do not have.
How to withdraw from a Delaware public school
If your child is currently enrolled somewhere, the order of operations matters. Registering the nonpublic school is not the same act as leaving the old one, and doing them in the wrong order is what produces an attendance letter six weeks later.
Register your homeschool with DDOE first
Create the account and register the nonpublic school so the enrollment your child is moving into actually exists.
Notify the current school in writing
Email the school and the district office, state the date, and say the child is enrolling in a registered Delaware nonpublic school. Keep the reply. A verbal conversation at the front desk is not a record.
Request the full transcript in the same message
Ask for the complete record including the year in progress, not only completed years. Do it while you are already in contact, not in November.
Ask for anything on file beyond grades
An IEP or 504 plan, immunisation records, standardized results the school holds. These are far easier to obtain the week you leave.
Diarise 30 September and 31 July
The first enrollment report is the one families new to Delaware home schooling most often miss, because nothing prompts them.
Delaware does not make you wait for permission. There is no approval step between the district and your first day, which is why families switching mid-year can genuinely start the same month.
Eagle Pro Tip
Register the school before you send the withdrawal email
Register the school before you send the withdrawal email, even if you plan to start next week. The registration is what makes your child’s next enrollment real, and the district’s records team is far more likely to release a transcript promptly to a family who can name the school the child is going to. It costs you nothing to do these in that order, and it removes the one gap in the process where a Delaware family can look, on paper, like a child enrolled nowhere.
K-12 online homeschool in Delaware, grade by grade
An online homeschool in Delaware carries the instruction so the registered parent does not have to teach every subject. What changes across the grades is what the family is actually managing.
Elementary, where the day is short
A younger child’s working day is genuinely shorter than a school day, and the first fortnight after a move is usually about settling rather than pace. Families starting at the beginning can see how online kindergarten is structured before committing to a full year.
Middle grades, where the day fragments
Sixth through eighth is where subjects separate and a parent’s coordinating load rises. Middle school online covers the shape of it, and the individual years are laid out at 6th grade online and 7th grade courses online.
High school, where the record starts to matter
From ninth grade the transcript becomes the thing that follows the student, and Delaware’s light reporting does not change that. Course by course: 9th grade online, 10th grade online, 11th grade online and 12th grade online. Families weighing the credential itself can read what an online high school diploma involves, and older students already carrying credits should start with transferring credits.
A Delaware family whose student is specifically in grades 9 through 12, rather than K-12, may want the high-school-only route at Delaware online high school.
The artifact that travels
Credits, transcripts and the record Delaware does not ask for
Delaware asks for enrollment and attendance. It does not ask what your child learned, which means nobody outside your household is keeping the academic record for you. That is freedom and it is also the catch: the transcript is the artifact that travels, and it has to exist.
Credits already earned sit with the school your student is leaving and do not move on their own. Ask for them in writing, ask for the year in progress as well as completed years, and do not assume anything transfers automatically. Whoever receives the student decides what is awarded and how it maps to their requirements. High School of America evaluates the transcript you provide and builds a graduation plan against it, so you can see where the existing work lands before deciding anything. If the record is missing or the previous school is slow, we can request it on your behalf with a signed release.
Delaware online homeschool across the three counties
Delaware is three counties, and the practical differences between them are about distance rather than law. The registration and the two filing dates are identical whether you are in New Castle, Kent or Sussex.
New Castle County
Wilmington, Newark, Middletown, Bear, Hockessin, New Castle and the Route 1 corridor. The largest districts sit here: Christina, Red Clay Consolidated, Brandywine, Colonial and Appoquinimink.
Kent County
Dover, Smyrna, Milford and the Capital and Caesar Rodney districts, with a significant share of military-connected families around Dover Air Force Base for whom a school that moves with the household is the point.
Sussex County
Georgetown, Seaford, Lewes, Rehoboth Beach and the Indian River and Cape Henlopen districts, where seasonal and agricultural work schedules often do not match a fixed school bell.
Because DE is small enough to cross in under two hours, families near the borders frequently compare requirements with the states next door. If that is you, the same programme is documented for Maryland K-12 online home school and New Jersey K-12 online home school, and further up the corridor for New York and Virginia.
Delaware homeschool questions, answered
Do I really have to open a school to home school in Delaware?
Yes, and it is less dramatic than it sounds. Registering a nonpublic school with DDOE is an online account and a form. It is the mechanism Delaware uses instead of a notice of intent, and single-family registration is designed for exactly one household.
When is the Delaware homeschool enrollment report due?
On or before 30 September each year, reporting enrollment as of the last school day in September. The attendance report follows on or before 31 July.
Does Delaware require homeschool testing or a portfolio?
No. Delaware requires no standardized testing, no portfolio, no evaluator and no teacher qualifications for a registered home school.
Can we start an online homeschool in Delaware mid-year?
Yes. There is no approval step to wait on. Register the school, notify the current school in writing, request the transcript, and begin. The reporting dates stay the same regardless of when in the year you start.
What if my child has an IEP or a 504 plan?
Request a copy from the district before you withdraw. The document is far easier to obtain while the child is still enrolled, and it is the clearest summary of what has been working that you will have.
Is online homeschool in Delaware the same as the district’s virtual school?
No. A district virtual programme keeps the child enrolled in the public school. A registered Delaware nonpublic school does not, which is the distinction the two annual filings exist to record.
Starting an online homeschool in Delaware
Two things decide whether a start goes smoothly: whether the transcript arrives, and whether the September filing is in the diary. Both are easier with someone reading the record alongside you.
Book a counselor call Enroll See tuition
Families comparing states can start from the K-12 online home school hub.
K-12 online homeschool by state
The programme is the same in every state; what changes is what the state asks of you. Families comparing the mid-Atlantic and north-east most often read Delaware against these:
Connecticut K-12 online home school
Massachusetts K-12 online home school
New Hampshire K-12 online home school
While families moving south or west more often land on these:
North Carolina K-12 online home school
West Virginia K-12 online home school
Ohio K-12 online home school
Florida K-12 online home school
Everything starts from High School of America.
Official Delaware sources: the Department of Education’s homeschools and private schools pages, its guidance on registering a nonpublic school and its annual reporting requirements, with the underlying statute at 14 Del. C. ch. 27.
This is a plain-language summary of Delaware’s requirements as they stand in 2026, not legal advice. DDOE publishes the current forms and deadlines, and it is worth confirming them before you file.