Flawed COVID mandates are speeding up the flight out of public schools

There are a lot of reasons for this — I wrote a book on the trend, “The New School,” almost a decade ago. But COVID has accelerated things dramatically.

Homeschooling is safer from infection and, more important, from the ever-changing whims of the educational bureaucracy. Rather than put up with the increasingly intrusive and authoritarian behavior of educrats, parents are taking control.

They’re also finding out that their kids are learning more and faster. (My own daughter wasn’t homeschooled, but after concluding that her public high school was wasting a huge chunk of her day, she switched to an online program and graduated early, starting college at 16.)

Now a federal court in my hometown has provided another reason: You’re not only under the thumbs of intrusive educrats; you’re also subject to whatever diktats activists can persuade a federal court to issue. In the case of Knox County, Tenn., schools, that consists of an order to mask all children, despite orders from Tennessee’s governor, Bill Lee, and the Knox County Board of Education to the contrary.