@verga You bring up a point that I hadn't thought of; the children who come from an abusive family and their only escape is during the day at school. I would think that it would be difficult for those kids to learn simply because they would be worried about what faces them when they get home while they are in school. Sad. Thanks for the reminder that not all children have a stable environment in which to learn or a loving home life.
I am an advocate of homeschooling for the simple fact of avoiding the 'brainwashing' or indoctrination of liberalism in our youths in public schools.
Homeschooling has become popular and I know several families that have done so and those homeschooled have done very well; some even exceptionally well. It takes a lot of dedication and time on the side of the parents and yes, some families don't have that kind of time nor money and some parents just don't have the patience.
There is no one size fits all in this case, but I believe the parents should be making the decision of how to educate their children ... and then there are parents that don't give a damn about the kids and those kids don't make it to class on a regular basis, and then the 'school system' is needed to step in.
Teachers, doctors, and nurses are mandatory reporters.
When we decided in 1986 to homeschool, our perception of PS reality was different from 2020s reality. Our big concern - not the sole concern, of course - was academic quality, which we knew was declining, significantly. We also knew, from experience, that just one bad teacher among the dozens in the later 5 or 7 years of school had do serious academic damage (e.g. my 8th Grade English teacher spent considerable time teaching what our 7th Grade English teacher skipped).
Sadly, homeschooling parents are finding even more and worse reasons to homeschool. Academics, student safety, schools undermining/attacking parental authority, social and political indoctrination, attacks against Christianity and Judaism, racial discrimination against whites, Jews, and Asians ...
Among our now-adult munchkins, they have three AA degrees and three bachelors degrees, one from China taught entirely in university-level Chinese. Our son, while in "high school", became an assistant manager at KFC, learned to play drums, and earned Eagle rank in a fairly demanding Scout troop. Among them, our munchkins have spent time - aside from brief tourist visits - in at least nine countries, only one in North America. I would not say we are typical, as YMMV, considerably, in homeschooling.
