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"While there are "some" students who survive the government schools to arrive with good skills, I can't get past the public school proclivities to indoctrinate rather than educate. On balance, it's a failed experiment - one that I'm not willing to subject my children to."

That's your privilege, of course. I was merely objecting to your blanket statement that kids in the public schools cannot read, write, or understand English. That's patently not true. Some fail, of course, but some home-schooled kids are virtually illiterate as well. Not all. Not most. Just some.

Public schools vary widely in their ability to educate kids in the basics. In my area, indeed, the entire county in which I live, over 90% of freshmen graduate, and in several of the schools it's almost 100%. Of those something like 75% continue their education. That's not failure, by any measure.

Yes, many home-schooled kids come to adulthood with excellent skills. But, so do many public school kids.

"Indoctrination" is another matter, and should be discussed separately, I think.

For you, home-schooling is your solution. For others, active participation in their kid's public school experience is their solution. In districts where parents are active and demand quality, that's what they get. In districts where parents don't care, they get another result. Same with home-schooling.

Go to our town's local library, anytime between 10AM and 5PM, and you'll see a couple dozen of those other home-school kids. They get dumped there during the day. They don't study there. The librarians are just baby-sitting them, and there are real behavioral issues. That's another aspect of home-schooling. In those cases, no schooling is going on at all at home. The parents work, and just send their kids to the library.

Home-schooling is not uniformly excellent and neither are public schools uniformly poor.