Despite the publicity, my parents never received a visit from school board officials. And the following year they also held my younger sister out in continuing violation of the law. Enrolled in school at age seven-plus, both my sister and I skipped grades and went on to successful scholastic careers, pursuing terminal degrees in our respective fields. But it is only since my family's early seventies brush with a life of crime that laws have been passed in most states protecting the kind of educational choices my parents made. Many people are surprised to learn that home schooling is not explicitly protected by the federal Constitution.
Parents have the right to send their children to qualified private schools.
The Supreme Court said nothing, however, about home schooling, and stated that the regulation and oversight of education was still within the province of the state. But this decision relates only to compulsory secondary school attendance, and much home schooling takes place at the elementary and primary level. The typical home-schooling family does not resemble this picture. My family's violation of the law in the seventies may have been the norm for home-schooling families generally. Very few states formally protected home schooling before the 1980s.