How the state rules and tools are checked

On this page

Primary sources only

Each state rule on this site comes from a primary source: a statute, a regulation, or the guidance a state education department publishes for families. Advocacy group summaries, blog posts and other secondary write-ups aren't used as sources, even when they're widely repeated. The research for the first five states covered was done on September 19, 2026; Colorado was added September 21, 2026. Every guide lists its sources at the bottom.

Two official statute websites couldn't be read directly, because both load their text with scripts the research tools couldn't get through. For Texas, the wording of Education Code § 25.086 was taken from texas.public.law, a site that republishes the Legislature's statute text along with the official citation; the Texas guide links to both it and the official page. For Pennsylvania, the site relies on the state Department of Education's own guide for home educators, the May 2026 edition, which reproduces the statute's wording one section at a time. That guide is an official source, but it isn't the statute itself, so the Pennsylvania wording you see here is the department's.

Every quote is tested

When the research was done, a plain-text copy of each source page was saved alongside the site's code. An automated test compares every quoted passage on the tool pages, the state guides and the state-rule boxes with those saved copies. It ignores spacing, capital letters and the style of quotation mark, and checks a passage shortened with an ellipsis one piece at a time, but otherwise the words have to match exactly. If a quote is mistyped or edited, the test fails, and the error has to be fixed before the change goes out.

How often the rules are rechecked

Every state rule is checked against its source again each quarter; the next review is due by December 19, 2026. A rule is also rechecked as soon as a state is known to have changed its law. Each page shows the date it was last updated, and the changes page records what changed and when.

How the attendance tracker applies a rule

Some rules ask for days and hours together, and some accept either one. With an and rule, like New York's, both counts have to reach their minimums before the tracker marks the year as met. With an or rule, like Pennsylvania's, reaching either count is enough. If you choose your own target, you pick which of the two applies.

North Carolina's law is written in calendar months, not days or hours, so the tracker keeps it that way. Any calendar month with even a single entry in your log counts toward the nine, as long as it falls within the record's school year, July through June, and the tracker reports how many of the nine are done. If the school year box doesn't read like 2026-27, it uses the school year of your latest entry. It never turns the months into a day count.

The projected finish date works from your own record:

1. Your pace is days per week: the total of logged days over the span of weeks your log covers so far, with any part week treated as a full week.
2. Hours still owed are converted to school days at the average number of hours you've logged per day, rounded up to a whole day.
3. With an and rule the longer of the two paths sets the date; with an or rule, the shorter one does.
4. Those remaining days, spread at your pace, are added on from your latest logged day.

No date is shown once the rule is met. Under an and rule that includes hours, such as New York's, no date is shown until some hours are logged, since there's no daily average yet; under an or rule, such as Pennsylvania's, the date is projected from days alone until hours appear.

GPA conventions

The transcript builder uses conventions that are common in the US, but there's no national standard. The letter scale runs from 4 points for an A down by one point per letter to 0 for an F; the optional plus/minus scale adds steps between letters, such as 3.7 for an A− and 3.3 for a B+. The transcript builder lists both scales in full. The weighted GPA adds half a point for an Honors course and a full point for AP or dual enrollment, but only for a grade of D or higher, so a failed course never gains a bonus. A half-credit course carries half the weight of a full-credit one, and the GPA is rounded half up to two decimal places, with the sums kept in exact tenths so rounding can't drift.

Colleges often recalculate a GPA using their own method, for example by dropping electives or ignoring the weighting. A clear list of courses, credits and grades matters to them at least as much as the final figure.

Federal holidays in the year planner

The planner doesn't store a list of holiday dates. It works out the eleven holidays named in 5 U.S.C. § 6103 from their rules for whatever year you plan, such as the third Monday in January for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. When a holiday lands on a Saturday, it's observed the Friday before; when it lands on a Sunday, it's observed the Monday after, matching how OPM treats federal employees. The day after Thanksgiving isn't on the list. When you plan by hours, a part day is rounded up to a whole school day.

Your records

Everything you enter in a tool is saved in your browser's local storage on that device, and nowhere else. The tools make no network requests with your records, and there's no account or server copy. Each tool can export a backup file (JSON) and import one again; importing a backup replaces what that tool currently holds. The attendance tracker can also export a CSV file for spreadsheets.

Clearing this site's data in your browser deletes your records for good, and a private or incognito window discards them when it closes. If your browser blocks storage, the tools still work and show a warning, but your entries last only until you close the tab. Export a backup regularly, and keep it somewhere safe.

Not covered yet

Only Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New York and Colorado have guides and built-in rules so far. The other 44 states and Washington, D.C. aren't covered yet. If you live in one of them, the attendance tracker and the year planner both accept a target you set yourself, and your state's own education department is the place to check what that target should be.