Know Your Homeschool Laws: Record Keeping
You do need to keep a few records. Specifically, you need to keep your annual test scores or assessments, and immunization records. You may also keep other records, but you are not required to.
There is no mechanism for the state to audit you, look at your records, or request them, unless you enter the school system. (At which point, frankly, they do their own test, and put your kid in a class based on age, regardless of how well or poorly *he did on the test). To be in compliance with the law, you do need to keep test/assessment scores and immunization records (or exemptions).
You may want to keep further records for yourself. It’s nice to look back and see what you’ve done. Because we’re unschoolers, one of the things I did, when we first started out, was to create a blog, for which I created post categories that were the different subjects. At the end of each day, I wrote about what we had done, sorted into those categories. Anytime I thought, “We never do anything,” I’d go back and look at the blog, and see that we were actually doing all kinds of things in, say, math, or English, or science.
Additional records are also a good thing to keep when you have a joint custody situation. I’ve seen a lot of homeschooled children forced into school because of custody arrangements. If your homeschooling is called into question in court, good solid records can be very beneficial to making your case to continue homeschooling.
RCW 28A.200.010
Home-based instruction — Duties of parents.
Each parent whose child is receiving home-based instruction under RCW 28A.225.010(4)
shall have the duty to:
(2) Ensure that test scores or annual academic progress assessments and immunization
records, together with any other records that are kept relating to the instructional and
educational activities provided, are forwarded to any other public or private school to
which the child transfers. At the time of a transfer to a public school, the superintendent
of the local school district in which the child enrolls may require a standardized
achievement test to be administered and shall have the authority to determine the
appropriate grade and course level placement of the child after consultation with parents
and review of the child’s records; and