Big news for the state of North Dakota! Starting with the 2025-2026 academic year, students in North Dakota public and private schools (and homeschools) will have to complete a class in computer science or cybersecurity in order to graduate from high school, according to a new state law. The law, signed March 24 by Gov. Doug Burgum, takes effect July 31, 2025.
High school graduation requirements for homeschoolers, if your state has them, are often an attempt to ensure minimum levels of academic achievement in specific subjects. Of course we expect that language arts and math are on the list, but cybersecurity just made its way onto the “required” list in North Dakota. Since ND does have graduation requirements for homeschoolers, this change will impact many of you in our ND community. Big changes like this will send ripples into other states, so we’ll watch how this plays out in the coming years in other states. Until then, let’s look at how your student can get high school AND college credit to meet this requirement.
NOTE: since the rules of the program are not out yet, consider this list preliminary. Once we know exactly what qualifies to meet the requirement, we can plan better. They may make distinctions between Information Systems, Computer Science, and Cybersecurity. This list does not. Again, preliminary.
