Standardized Testing for Homeschoolers: Which States Require It, and Who Can Give the Test

If you are searching for at home standardized testing, you are almost certainly asking one of two things: whether your state makes you test at all, and whether you are allowed to sit at your own kitchen table and give the test yourself.

The answers are more forgiving than most parents expect. By the Coalition for Responsible Home Education's count, 29 states never require a homeschooled student to be evaluated for educational progress at any point in their schooling^[1]. Among the states that do require something, about half will accept a portfolio or a teacher's evaluation instead of a test. And in a good number of testing states, a parent with no degree and no credential is a perfectly legal test administrator.

This guide covers who is on the hook, in which grades, who may hold the pencil, and what happens to the score afterward.

What Counts as a Standardized Test for Compliance Purposes

A quick bit of vocabulary, because the wrong instrument is the most expensive mistake in this whole area.

When a state statute says "standardized test," it almost always means a norm-referenced achievement test: a test given under fixed conditions to a national sample, so your child's raw score can be reported as a percentile or a stanine against that sample. The Iowa Assessments, Stanford 10, the California Achievement Test, TerraNova, and MAP Growth all fit. Choosing between them is its own question, driven mostly by what your state accepts and who is allowed to proctor, and it deserves its own treatment rather than a paragraph here.

What does not count is just as important. Placement and diagnostic tools sold alongside real achievement tests look similar and cost less, but their publishers make no claim that they satisfy a state testing law. Neither does the PASS, which is popular with homeschoolers and explicitly designed for parent administration but is not nationally normed, so it fails in any state whose statute uses that phrase. If your state requires a nationally normed instrument, "it came with a percentile" is not the same thing as "it qualifies."

Does Your State Actually Require Testing?

Start here, because most families discover they are exempt from any annual assessment at all.

Twenty-five states require no assessment of any kind. Not a test, not a portfolio, not an evaluation: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

Two of those are recent and still misreported all over the internet. Ohio repealed its testing requirement in House Bill 33, effective October 2023; only the annual notification survives. South Dakota eliminated its grades 2, 4, 8, and 11 testing in 2021. If a page tells you Ohio homeschoolers must test, it was written before the law changed and you should distrust the rest of it too.

That count is a little softer than it looks, because a handful of states attach the requirement to one enrollment option and not others. Iowa's independent private instruction route asks for no assessment at all, and Louisiana's nonpublic-school option works the same way. Which option you filed under matters as much as which state you live in.

Among states that do require something, the useful split is not "testing states" versus "non-testing states." It is whether a test is the only accepted proof. About five states require a standardized test with no non-test substitute: Georgia, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oregon, and Pennsylvania. Everywhere else with an assessment requirement, a portfolio review or a certified teacher's written evaluation will satisfy the law just as well, and for a child who tests badly that option is worth knowing about before you order anything.

North Carolina is the outlier worth naming: it requires a nationally standardized test every year, in every grade, covering English grammar, reading, spelling, and math. No other state's mandate is that broad.

State Assessment Requirements at a Glance (2026)

Submit or Retain? Where the Scores Actually Go

This is the single most under-reported distinction in homeschool testing, and it changes how much the whole exercise should worry you.

In about eleven states the score is a submission: it goes to a division superintendent, a district office, or into a portfolio that a school official reads. Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Maine, New York, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia all work this way, each with its own deadline.

In roughly ten others the score is a record you keep. Georgia, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Washington require the test but never ask to see the result. Oregon only wants it if the education service district specifically requests it. Alaska and North Carolina keep it available for inspection but do not collect it. New Hampshire goes furthest and puts the protection in the statute itself: results stay with the parent and cannot be used as grounds for terminating a home education program.

So a family in Washington or Vermont can give a nationally normed test at their own kitchen table, file the report in a binder, and legally never show it to another human being. That is a very different emotional proposition than mailing a percentile to a superintendent, and it is worth knowing which one you are actually facing before you start dreading April.

Whichever side you land on, the score belongs in your permanent file either way. A test result is one of the few pieces of third-party evidence a homeschool produces, and it earns its place alongside your attendance log and work samples in a proper record-keeping system. Whether that is a labeled folder in a filing cabinet or a platform like Numa that keeps score reports attached to the right student and year, the point is that you can find it in eight years when a college or a registrar asks.

Can You Give the Test at Home Yourself?

Here is the question behind most at home standardized testing searches, and the answer has two locks on it. Both have to open.

Lock one is the test publisher. Every instrument carries qualification rules set by whoever publishes it, and they vary enormously. The California Achievement Test, TerraNova, and the Iowa Assessments Form E can be given by a parent with no degree at all. The Stanford 10 splits: the paper version requires a bachelor's degree, while the online version drops that requirement entirely, which is a genuine unlock for parents without one. At the far end, the Woodcock-Johnson and the WRAT require a credentialed professional, in person, because the publisher will not rent them to anyone else.

Lock two is your state. A test administrator rule in statute overrides whatever the publisher would have allowed. Pennsylvania flatly prohibits parents from testing their own children for the required assessment. Oregon demands a neutral examiner who is not related to the child by blood or marriage and who holds a teaching license, a psychology license, publisher certification, or graduate testing coursework. Tennessee requires a proctor unrelated to the child. North Dakota wants a state-certified teacher, though it exempts parents who hold a bachelor's degree or a teaching license. Florida and South Carolina route testing through certified teachers.

And this is precisely where families get caught. You can legally purchase a parent-proctored test that your state will not legally let you proctor. Nobody at the checkout page will stop you, because the vendor is selling to all fifty states and the restriction is in your statute, not their catalog. Check the state rule first, then shop.

On the permissive side, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Washington, and West Virginia all let a parent administer. New Hampshire is the clearest case, because its statute defers outright to the instrument: the test must be given "by a person who meets the qualifications established by the provider or publisher of the test." New York is the one most often misunderstood in the other direction. Its regulation does not defer to the publisher; it names who may give the test — professional staff at a public school, staff at a nonpublic school with that school's consent, or, at your home or another reasonable location, a New York State-certified teacher or "another qualified person." A parent can be that qualified person, but only with the superintendent's consent, and consent is something you obtain rather than something you assume.

Who May Administer, by State

The Four Ways a Homeschool Test Gets Administered

What At-Home and Online Testing Actually Costs

Prices in this category are remarkably stable, and remarkably unpublished. Most of the pages that rank for homeschool testing list no cost at all, which is strange given that cost is the first thing a parent wants to know.

Verified as of August 2026, a full-length nationally normed achievement test runs $25 to $48 per student. The cheapest legitimate option is a California Achievement Test at around $25. Roughly $45 is the market rate for an online test across nearly every provider, whether it is the Iowa, the Stanford 10, or a Spanish-language equivalent. Remote human proctoring runs $45 to $60. A test that requires a credentialed evaluator, like the Woodcock-Johnson, lands around $95 because you are buying professional time, not a booklet.

Add administrator fees where your state forces you to hire one. Those range from nothing, when a friendly certified teacher does it as a favor, to a couple hundred dollars. Budget $30 to $150 for an evaluator in states that accept one instead of a test.

Turnaround is where deadlines get missed. Online scoring is measured in days: one to seven business days is typical, and remote-proctored adaptive tests can report inside 48 hours. Paper is measured in weeks, commonly two to six, and at least one major provider states plainly that its paper Stanford 10 takes about six weeks and cannot be expedited. Line that up against a testing window that closes June 30 in West Virginia, August 1 in Virginia, August 15 in Oregon, or September 1 in Maine, and a May order of a paper test is a genuine compliance risk. Order online, or order paper early.

Is There Free Standardized Testing for Homeschoolers?

Sometimes, and the honest answer has two halves.

There is no free commercial option. Every nationally normed achievement test sold to families sits behind a per-student fee. Anything advertised as a free standardized test is a practice test, a placement tool, or a diagnostic, and none of those satisfy a state requirement.

But three states put free testing into statute, which almost nobody mentions:

• Tennessee requires that tests administered by the commissioner or a designee be given without charge; only a private testing service costs you money.
• North Dakota makes the school district responsible for the cost of its own test and for administration, and the district also covers administration of a nationally normed test if you ask it to administer one.
• Hawaii provides its state assessment to homeschoolers at no cost.

New York sits in between: testing during the public school's own testing program is available, but if you choose an instrument the district does not use, you pay to procure it. West Virginia and Pennsylvania both allow the state test as an option without their statutes saying who pays, so ask your district rather than assuming.

If your state is on that short list and your child is comfortable testing in a school building, the free route is real money saved. If not, the $25 to $45 range is the honest floor.

What Happens If the Score Comes Back Low

The fear underneath most of these searches is not logistical. It is that a bad number gives someone authority over your family. In almost every state, it does not.

Most testing states set no threshold at all. Georgia, Pennsylvania, Maine, and others simply require that the test happened. Pennsylvania's homeschool community puts it about as plainly as it can be put: poor performance does not limit your option to homeschool, because the evaluator only needs to verify that testing was completed.

Where thresholds exist, they are low and the consequence is a plan, not a removal:

• Virginia and West Virginia use the 4th stanine, roughly the 23rd percentile. Missing it triggers a probationary year with a remediation plan, and in Virginia you may retest with a different instrument or substitute an independent evaluation before the August 1 deadline.
• New York wants a composite above the 33rd percentile or one academic year of growth. Subscores do not count against you, only the composite.
• Minnesota, North Dakota, and Iowa use the 30th percentile, but the consequence differs sharply. Minnesota prompts further evaluation. North Dakota and Iowa both require a formal remediation plan, and in each state failing to produce one can cost you the right to keep home educating.
• Oregon sets the bar at the 15th percentile, or simply matching your prior composite.
• Tennessee uses no percentile at all. It measures how far behind grade level a child's score falls, and the response escalates: three to six months behind brings a conversation with the director of schools, six to nine months means consulting a licensed teacher and designing a remedial course, and more than a year behind on the comprehensive score for two consecutive tests lets the director require enrollment in a public, private, or church-related school. Note "may require" and "two consecutive" — one weak year is not the trigger, and a documented learning disability is carved out.
• Hawaii and Florida judge progress rather than a cut score. Hawaii treats scores in the upper two-thirds of the stanine range as adequate and bars any enrollment recommendation before third grade or unless progress is inadequate two semesters running. Florida asks only that a student progress "commensurate with her or his ability," with a full year to remediate before reevaluation.
• Colorado is the strictest in the country at the 13th percentile, and it is the one state where persistent low scores can end home instruction: below the line twice, and the child must enroll in a public, independent, or parochial school until the next testing period.

Read that list again and notice what it mostly says. A child scoring at the 25th percentile is completely fine nearly everywhere. And a low score is far more often a testing-skills problem than a learning problem. Plenty of experienced homeschoolers report the same thing after a first attempt: the child knew the material and could not demonstrate it through a bubble sheet.

That is fixable, and it is worth separating from your own performance as a teacher. As one long-time homeschool writer put it, it often feels like standardized tests are a test of us, of our efficacy as homeschoolers. They are not. They are a snapshot of one child on one morning, taken with an instrument that was designed for a classroom of thirty.

Preparing a First-Time Tester Without Teaching to the Test

• Teach the bubble sheet, not the content — the first time a child sees a scantron should not be on test day
• Practice the format for 20 minutes, twice — a $5 to $10 practice booklet removes most of the novelty and most of the anxiety
• Say out loud that skipping is allowed — every test is built with questions above grade level, and hitting one is not failure
• Use untimed versions where offered — several instruments have untimed forms, and Iowa is untimed for K through 2 by default
• Apply existing accommodations — documented IEP, 504, or evaluation accommodations generally carry over to at-home paper testing
• Separate siblings into different rooms — testing multiple children at one table produces exactly the interruptions you would expect
• Test at the working level where the law allows it — some states let you choose the level rather than the enrolled grade

Your Testing Year, Start to Finish

The Bottom Line

Standardized testing is the part of homeschool compliance that generates the most dread and, for most families, the least actual work. Two thirds of the country never requires it. Where it is required, it is usually three or four times across a child's entire education, often satisfied by a portfolio instead, and frequently administered by you, at home, with no credential at all.

What matters is getting the specifics right for your state: whether you must test, in which grades, who may hold the pencil, which instruments qualify, and when the score is due. Those five facts are the whole game, and they are exactly the things generic testing articles leave out. If your state's rules read ambiguously, or you are weighing a test against a portfolio for a child who struggles with them, talk it through with us before the window closes.