You seem to be deliberately misconstruing in order to pick a fight, or else your reading comprehension skills are somewhat sketchy. Either way, move along.

The fact of the matter is the woman killed her kids because she wanted to, and even had they been in public school, she still would have found the time to do so when they were home.

You miss the point – she didn’t actually home-school the kids; she killed them when they came home from school, and then told the school that she was home-schooling them. Had the law not allowed her to withdraw them from school so abruptly and with no oversight, the school would have realised they weren’t there, figured they were unlikely to all be sick, and immediately alerted the police, who could have rushed over and perhaps saved them.

Of course, this assumes the public school would even have noticed anything was wrong before about a month had gone by, which seems unlikely to me.

It also ignores the fact that if she didn’t have this excuse she could have just told the school the kids had been sent to their grandmother in North Carolina or somewhere. That’s perfectly legal in every state in the union, and it would be a long time if ever before the school noticed that they hadn’t received a request to transfer the records.

So yeah, the story’s still bogus, but not for the reason you give.

The parent has the decision on what constitutes an appropriate education. There is no requirement on parental qualifications, and no requirement on oversight (oh boy though, do they try – until they discover you know the law. Two of my nieces have never been to school, and my sister has only once seen social workers at her house. That was about 12 years ago, and I think they’re still trying to get the fleas out of their ears).

This is possibly the only sphere in which we Brits don’t have an infinitely worse Nanny problem than America. Are you aware of this British blog (scroll down and read the post re: Nanny Bans Heroes)?

http://nannyknowsbest.blogspot.com/