It probably won't materialize, but from time to time, I play around with the idea of finding the best state to homeschool my son. Our Southern state is neither the best nor the worst, regulation is fairly minimal, but they do force you to teach basic subject areas each and every year, even if it is, beyond a certain point, re-hashing the same topics over and over. Ideally, I'd like to find a state where no notification to the public school district is required (in that my son has never been in public school, that's not an issue here either), and where you are only required to keep records of what has been taught, and how the student performed, otherwise, how you teach, and what you teach, is up to you. I do have to wonder whether our traditionally somewhat educationally-challenged state tries to over-compensate for past deficiencies --- the concept of STEM and "ensuring success" is huge here. I also suspect that there is a politically correct agenda, not to put it too crudely, to ensure that each and every minority student has received the maximum help to get as much education as they can. I am not suggesting that there is anything bad or wrong about this, but it does translate into forcing students to do work which often does not match their aptitudes, not to mention pulling them away from more practical things they could be studying, that would better prepare them for the adult working world. In other words, why be a plumber or electrician, when you can be a nuclear physicist or a brain surgeon, never mind that plumbers and electricians can make huge bank, and not everyone is cut out to be a nuclear physicist or a brain surgeon? (Please let me be abundantly clear that I am not advocating the idea that "school should just be job training and nothing else". Even the Marxist-Leninists, bad as they were, did make great allowance for culture and fine arts, as long as it was no threat to their ideology. My wife studied a year or two of Latin under the communist regime in Poland.)
I have heard good things about Oklahoma and, mirabile dictu, New Jersey (which I would otherwise assume to be a liberal, high-tax, anti-2A Eastern Seaboard nanny state), as far as the states where homeschooling is easiest. If it would help my son to get an education better suited to his aptitudes and talents --- which are not inconsiderable, his abilities for rhetoric, argumentation, and debate never cease to amaze me, and he can set up computer, entertainment, and gaming systems like nobody's business, though there have been better math students in the world --- and if I could work out something regarding his custody (his mother has chosen not to see him in over a year, even though she lives 15 minutes away with her mortally sinful invalidly "remarried" consort), it's an idea that I'd at least be willing to entertain. We could always just lock up our houses here, set up online security and video surveillance --- my neighbors are golden and we've got each other back, I even assured one neighbor lady, when she told me she got scared sometimes by herself and didn't own a gun for home defense, that I pack heat and can respond to a situation if needed --- keep minimal utilities connected, keep the taxes and insurance paid (our HOA doesn't allow rentals, feh!) and get a small apartment or house, to fulfill the residency requirements in our temporary home state. I don't relish the idea of leaving the nice homes to which we've grown accustomed, but my son's education is more important than our living circuмstances.
Any thoughts or ideas?
(PS --- I know that "packing heat" in Ted McCarrick's Garden State would be a non-starter. That would be one of many things to consider.)