“But,,,hey!,,,When it comes to First Amendment Rights forget it. Forget about any constitution and human right to free assembly. Government can and does threaten good kids with armed police action if they fail to show up at “Thug School”.”
Well, to give my beloved Virginia some small measure of credit, this is I think the only state with a religious exemption to it’s compulsory schooling statute. We actually have a provision for religion based conscientious objection, and it’s how many home educators in Virginia operate. Of course I would prefer that the General Assembly simply got rid of the compulsory schooling statute, but that’s probably not going to happen for awhile.
We home schooled in VA just by signing some papers saying we would, and stating our qualifications (all you need is undergrad degree) to teach. We didn’t have to give any reason.
Once a year the kids had to take a standardized test (Stanford as I recall) to show they were ‘on target’ for their grade(s). They could have successfully passed through the 8th grade test when they were in 2nd. It was NOT a difficult test.