Homeschool Management

Part of the worlds-biggest-software-project initiative.

An AI-native, open-source platform that gives homeschooling families the planning, tracking, and compliance tools they need without locking them into expensive proprietary SaaS subscriptions.

Homeschool Management is a comprehensive curriculum planning, progress tracking, and portfolio building platform designed for the 3-5 million homeschooled students in the US and growing international communities. It replaces the patchwork of paper planners, spreadsheets, and fragmented tools that families currently rely on with a single, modern system that handles lesson scheduling, gradebooks, attendance, transcripts, and state compliance documentation.

Why Homeschool Management?

No open-source alternative exists. Every dedicated homeschool management tool on the market is proprietary SaaS. Families have zero data portability and no ability to self-host or extend their planning tools.
Incumbent UIs are dated. Platforms like Homeschool Tracker (20+ years old) and Homeschool Manager offer functional but aging interfaces that lag far behind modern web and mobile standards, driving abandonment among less technical parents.
Critical features are paywalled. Homeschool Panda gates transcript generation behind its top-tier subscription. Other tools charge per-student or per-curriculum-package fees that compound for larger families.
AI capabilities are absent across the board. No incumbent offers AI-assisted lesson plan generation, adaptive pacing, learning-gap detection, or automated progress narrative drafting -- every reviewed competitor requires fully manual planning and reporting.
State compliance is fragmented. Homeschooling requirements vary dramatically across all 50 US states, yet no existing tool provides jurisdiction-specific automated compliance workflows. Families are left to research and satisfy legal requirements on their own.

Key Features

Lesson Planning and Scheduling

Multi-student, multi-grade weekly lesson planner with drag-and-drop or template-based scheduling
Configurable rescheduling logic for missed school days (keep-on-day, shift-one-day, or pull-back-entire-schedule modes)
Curriculum publisher import via CSV/structured format, with partner integrations for major publishers (Sonlight, Abeka, Saxon, Singapore Math)
Non-standard school-year calendar support with configurable terms, semesters, and year-round schedules

Gradebook and Progress Tracking

Assignment-level completion tracking with mark-complete workflow
Grade entry with configurable grading scales and automatic subject-level grade calculation
Visual progress dashboards and charts across subjects and students
Report card generation and progress reports for evaluators or state submission

Attendance and Compliance

Daily attendance logging by student with configurable school-day and school-year definitions
Exportable attendance reports formatted for state compliance requirements
State compliance templates covering jurisdiction-specific notification, assessment, and portfolio review requirements
Instructional hours logging and reporting

Transcript and College Readiness

High-school course and credit management across Grades 9-12
Weighted and unweighted GPA calculation with customisable scales
Professional-format transcript generation suitable for college applications
Extracurricular activities, standardised test scores, and volunteer hours tracking

Portfolio and Documentation

Photo and document upload organised by subject, student, and date
Portfolio artefact collection for state portfolio review submissions
Activity stream and progress journaling for continuous documentation
Course description and lesson plan archiving

AI-Native Advantage

This platform uses AI to address the most time-consuming parts of homeschool administration that no incumbent has touched. An AI lesson-plan generator converts curriculum scope-and-sequence documents or plain-text learning goals into ready-to-use weekly plans. Progress narrative generation auto-drafts the prose annual progress reports that many states require, pulling from attendance logs, grades, and activity records. Gap analysis examines assessment results to surface learning weaknesses and suggest remediation resources, while transcript quality review flags missing credit hours, GPA calculation inconsistencies, or common errors before submission to colleges.

Tech Stack & Deployment

The platform targets three deployment modes: a hosted cloud service for families who want zero setup, a self-hosted option for privacy-conscious users or co-ops that want to run on their own infrastructure, and a hybrid mode where data stays local but AI features use cloud APIs. The system will provide a responsive web interface as the baseline, with native iOS and Android apps for on-the-go lesson logging and attendance marking during school days that are not anchored to a desk. Curriculum publisher integrations will use structured import formats (CSV, JSON) with the goal of establishing direct publisher partnerships for automatic lesson-plan import.

Market Context

The US homeschool population is estimated at 3-5 million students (roughly 6-8% of school-age children), a figure that nearly doubled during and after the COVID-19 pandemic and shows no signs of returning to pre-pandemic levels. The market is fragmented -- incumbents range from $39/year (Homeschool Manager) to $7.99/month per student (Homeschool Planet), with additional per-curriculum charges, and no single platform dominates. Adjacent revenue opportunities include a curriculum marketplace, premium content, co-op scheduling tools, and college counseling services.

Project Status

This project is in the research and specification phase.
Contributions, feedback, and domain expertise are welcome.

Contributing

We welcome contributions from developers, domain experts, and potential users. See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

Important: All contributions must be your own original work or clearly attributed open-source material with a compatible licence. Copyright infringement and licence violations will not be tolerated and will result in immediate removal of the offending contribution. If you are unsure whether a piece of code, text, or other material is safe to contribute, open an issue and ask before submitting.

Licence

Licence to be determined. See discussion for context.