The first nine weeks are almost over. Review them before the calendar compresses.

Two deadlines are on the calendar. A third one isn't waiting to be put there.

Issue 23 covered two deadlines a family now has to place on the calendar and manage deliberately: the College Board's November 13 AP exam ordering cutoff, and the start of Christmas-season planning, both, in our assessment, cheaper to handle in October than in November. Both take active work: deciding, contacting a coordinator, reserving a book or a library hold.

A third checkpoint arrives this week regardless of whether anyone manages it. For a family that started its year in early August, nine weeks of instruction closes out around now, the first quarter of the school year. A family that started in mid-to-late August reaches the same mark in the second half of October. Nothing forces a homeschooling family to notice a nine-week mark the way a co-op's registration deadline and progress check-ins force the issue, as issues 20 and 21 covered. But the mark is real, and in our assessment it is a better moment to compare the actual term against August's goals than any of the weeks that will follow it, because each later week carries more of the coordinator calls and Christmas-unit ordering that Issue 23 put on the calendar.

Why nine weeks, specifically

This dispatch didn't pick nine weeks arbitrarily. A school that grades in nine-week quarters closes its first grading period at this mark. A homeschooling family can adopt the same checkpoint once it sets goals in August.

The mark is useful precisely because of its timing: enough has happened by now to judge against a plan, and a real gap hasn't yet become expensive to fix.

In our assessment, a checkpoint does work a vague feeling does not

At this point in the fall, a general sense of how things are going, without much underneath it, can stand in for a review. Zimmerman's cyclical model of self-regulated learning treats this differently. It describes a distinct self-reflection phase that follows a forethought phase, where goals and plans get set, and a performance phase, where the performance takes place. In the self-reflection phase, a learner judges the work and formulates reasons for the results (Panadero & Alonso-Tapia, "How do students self-regulate? Review of Zimmerman's cyclical model of self-regulated learning," Anales de Psicología, 2014).

The model describes an individual learner, but the same structure applies to the parent running the year. Forethought happened in August, when the goals were set. Performance is the nine weeks since. Self-reflection doesn't happen on its own; it has to be scheduled, which is what this checkpoint is for.

The method is plain:

1. Pull the actual goals set in August, not a reconstructed memory of them. A specific reading level, a math pace, a habit the family wanted in place by fall.
2. Check each one against what has actually happened, not against how the subject feels day to day. Issue 19's own standard, a specific observable thing that either changed or did not, applies here too.
3. Sort the result into one of two categories: a real, specific gap between the plan and the nine weeks that followed it, or a confirmation that the plan and the term match closely enough that no action is needed.

What each outcome calls for

A real gap found now, in the first week of October, is a gap with room left to close before the holidays compress the calendar and before the coordinator calls and Christmas-unit ordering from Issue 23 fill the same hours. A gap found in November competes with the written AP confirmation Issue 23 puts before November 13 and with Christmas-unit ordering; the same gap found now does not.

The other outcome is worth naming on its own terms rather than treating it as a non-event: a term that matches its August plan closely enough to need no change. A family that runs the checkpoint and finds nothing wrong has replaced a vague sense of things going fine with an actual, dated confirmation. That's a meaningfully different thing to be holding in November if a real question comes up about whether the fall worked.

The dispatch

• The six-week minimum, and eight to ten weeks for sequential-skill subjects. Issue 18 set the standard this dispatch series has used all fall for telling ordinary settling-in friction from a change worth making; this issue's nine-week checkpoint falls inside that eight-to-ten-week range.
• The concrete standard for judging a swapped subject. Issue 19 gives the specific, observable metric this issue's Step 2 asks a family to apply against every subject, not only a swapped one.
• Auditing the whole week's structure. Issue 22 covers the routine, block, and loop audit; a real gap found in this issue's goal review may trace back to the structural failure that audit is built to catch.
• The two deadlines on the same calendar. Issue 23 covers AP exam ordering and the start of Christmas-season planning, both with work it places in October.

The federal tax credit's regulations were published October 2

Treasury and the IRS announced proposed regulations under Section 25F on October 1, along with companion temporary regulations (IRS, IR-2026-117). The Federal Register published both on October 2: temporary regulations, T.D. 10057, on how states elect to participate and list scholarship-granting organizations (91 FR 62655), and proposed regulations, REG-117199-25, on the credit itself and the requirements for those organizations (91 FR 62818). The announcement came one day after the end-of-September date by which Treasury said in June it expected to issue proposed regulations (U.S. Department of the Treasury, "Treasury Previews Education Freedom Tax Credit Guidance"). Four points matter to a homeschool family. The texts cited below were retrieved in October 2026.

• The credit. A donor's credit is the lesser of qualified contributions, reduced by any state credits claimed for them, or $1,700, and spouses filing jointly count as separate taxpayers, so a joint return can claim up to $3,400 (IR-2026-117; proposed § 1.25F-2(a)(2), (c)(1), 91 FR 62856). It is nonrefundable, and unused amounts carry forward for up to five years (proposed § 1.25F-2(a)(1), (e), 91 FR 62856-62857).
• Who qualifies as a student. A scholarship recipient must belong to a household with income at or below 300 percent of area median gross income and be eligible to enroll in a public school. The IRS is to publish the income figures each year in the Internal Revenue Bulletin (proposed § 1.25F-1(a)(4), 91 FR 62854-62855).
• The homeschool question is still open. The rule defines "school" and qualified expenses by cross-reference to Section 530(b)(3), whose test is state law, and says guidance on which expenses and schools qualify will be issued separately under Section 530, with no date given (proposed § 1.25F-1(a)(14), (17), 91 FR 62855; proposed-rule preamble, 91 FR 62821 and 62826). No provision of the proposed rule addresses home schools. Eligibility for a homeschooling family therefore still depends on whether its state treats a home school as a school.
• The dates. Comments on the proposed rule are due December 1, 2026, and a public hearing is set for December 15 (91 FR 62818). For 2027, a state must file its advance election on Form 15714 by January 1, 2027 and may perfect it by providing its list of organizations by February 15, 2027 (temporary § 1.25F-5T(c)(3), 91 FR 62669). Taxpayers, organizations and states may rely on the proposed rule for qualified contributions made on or after January 1, 2027 if they follow the portions that apply to them in their entirety and in a consistent manner (proposed-rule preamble, 91 FR 62836). The Treasury Secretary is quoted in the IRS release as saying that 30 states have opted in (IR-2026-117).

The site's federal tax credit guide was updated October 3 with the full provision table, the date table and the state-by-state homeschool matrix.

North Carolina's scholarship-organization list

North Carolina's election became law over the governor's veto in Session Law 2026-6 (House Bill 87), which has the State Education Assistance Authority, NCSEAA, certify and submit the list of organizations. The same law sets the Authority's rulemaking deadline at the later of July 1, 2026 or 120 days after federal regulations are published, and it provides that listed organizations may fund home school expenses to the extent federal law allows. That last provision meets the open question above, because the federal rule leaves the expense list to later Section 530 guidance. NCSEAA's own page on scholarship granting organizations (NCSEAA, "Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGOs)," Wayback Machine capture of September 23, 2026) said federal regulations had not been finalized and listed no organizations (verify current status directly with NCSEAA before making any 2027 giving or application plans).

What lands in issue 25

Issue 25 turns to the AP-coordinator side of issue 23's advice: what College Board's own guidance says about a coordinator's answer, and what a family does with a no. It also covers the Christmas-planning half of that advice, which is Every Homeschool's own suggested timeline. Plus the policy dispatch.

Issue 23 · Issue 22 · Issue 21 · Archive