They do it with mom and dad, siblings, homeschool friends, public school and private school friends, t-ball, scouts, church and synagogue and mosque groups, volitional relationships, and the love and care of family and friends. Kind of like humans thrived for thousands of years before institutional state-run schooling. Imagine.

Homeschooling parents are finding out how little it actually costs to provide an excellent education. Plus, with the massive increase in housing values, are coming big unpleasant surprises on their property tax bills, causing people to actually look at those bills and realize that 80% of their property taxes are going down the black hole that is mal-educating the kids. Are those parents going to vote for the next school tax levy? Certainly NOT.

Everyone needs to be forced into the system to keep pouring money into the black hole

Absolutely NOT.

1. Any homeschooling parent who makes ANY effort AT ALL is doing a better job than the public schools.

2. Homeschooling parents are the best experts at what their children should learn and when, NOT the gov’t or the writers of standardized tests. Also, the tests are infested with woke nonsense, CRT, etc. Take a look through a current GED test prep book.

3. Not all areas have formal homeschooling groups–and there is absolutely zero need to enforce socialization, hHomeschooled kids routinely are much BETTER socialized than their public schooled peers.

4. The mandatory reporter system is a joke. As has already been noted here, many mandatory reporters are, themselves, abusing kids. Abuse within the homeschooling community is nowhere near the problem it is among public schooled kids, who spend their days with mandatory reporters. The media just likes to scream about it on the rare occasions when it does happen

You have a nasty desire to increase government involvement in FAMILY life. You NEED to get that fixed.

What else happened in the schools in the late 50’s/early 60’s? Consolidation! That was when the rural one room schoolhouses were closed up and all the country kids were bused to large graded schools in the towns. Before that, the town schools were also much smaller, and kids did not go to larger schools till high school

I had the opportunity to work inside a state’s public schools for some time. There are CRIMES committed against children by other children every. single. day. in schools all across the country. I’ve seen it. And not just crimes but verbal abuse of every kind. That’s not to mention the crimes and the disrespect teachers get every day in the dinosaur “public schools.”

This is what happens when children are given a “right” to an education. That’s literally the law in every state, and it’s the chief reason why the schools are failing. They can’t expel the failing kids who have no intention of ever learning a damn thing, and every intention of raising hell for 12 years at the expense of all the other students. Expel them. Expel them on the motion of a teacher. Yes, teachers should have the power and right to say who will be in her / his classroom. Period, end of discussion. No disciplinary administrators involved. When teacher says “out,” out the brat goes.

With all due respect, I simply don’t care that some parents who homeschool their children are “slackers” and “don’t really educate.” Let them be slackers. Let the children of slackers be beach bums or hippies, or whatever they want to be. I won’t take responsibility for their bad choices. So, if they get hooked on drugs and die, or they go to prison, it won’t be because I subsidized their parents’ stupid choices.

Learn to think outside the NANNY GOVERNMENT box.

I agree about preparing parents. That’s why I fully support voucher systems, tax cuts, or whatever. That said, in my view, those are really transitional systems. My ideal is homeschooling, education totally independent of government with moms returning to traditional roles IF they so choose.

Children obey rules more readily in informal social controls systems (parents and respected elders like clergy). In the old days, for example, when children misbehaved at home, pops might say, okay, you go to bed tonight without dinner. That forced compliance. Why? Because as a rule children love their parents and seek their approval because they fear the loss of parental love above all. Parental love is food, clothing, etc. Sounds brutal maybe, but IMO it’s true.

Formal social controls like laws, rules, and regulations don’t work to instill respect for others in children because the state legislatures, state education bureaucracies, and school boards are too distant, and they have little or no fear of the consequences for breaking rules and acting like fools. Children don’t see those systems and they don’t fear consequences. The miscreants at school laugh at administrators and teachers. Some of them WANT to be suspended.

I am a supporter of Hillsdale College. They are remarkable and have fabulous on-line courses. If I had children they would go to Hillsdale!

In theory, I agree with the notion of abandoning public schools. But you need to have things prepared for parents. Generous tax cuts for parents teaching at home and vouchers for parochial schools are a start.

In the meantime, demanding and enforcing standards on public schools are a must. Incompetent teachers need to be fired and the administrative staff should be cut down to bare bones.