


Oh, New Jersey, you hypocritical gem of the Garden State, where the only thing blooming brighter than the bureaucracy is the audacity to meddle in homeschoolers’ lives while your own schools crumble like a battered boardwalk taffy stand. In a move that screams, “We can’t fix our own mess, so let’s micromanage yours,” Trenton’s lawmakers are cooking up two delightful bills—Assembly Bill 5825 and Assembly Bill 5796—to slap a leash on homeschooling parents.
Because nothing says “freedom” like forcing you to beg permission from a system that can’t even teach its own teachers to spell. Yes, New Jersey, the state that ditched the Praxis Core Test in 2025 because basic reading, writing, and math were too hard for teachers, now wants you to prove your kids are learning. The hypocrisy might make even Cory Booker blush.
Let’s begin with Assembly Bill 5825, courtesy of Assemblyman Sterley S. Stanley (D-East Brunswick), who’s apparently convinced homeschoolers are raising feral kids who can’t count to ten. This bill demands you send a heartfelt memo to your local school superintendent every fall, listing your kid’s name, age, and reporting the anti-school deviant teaching them at home. Oh, and the kicker? You’ve got to submit your entire curriculum for approval, ensuring it “aligns with the New Jersey Student Learning Standards.” You know, those standards that have public school kids sculpting endangered crayfish in art class to learn about climate change while their math and reading scores tank faster than a Jersey Shore bar at last call. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) showed a seven-point drop in fourth-grade math and a five-point drop in reading since 2020, the worst reading decline since 1990. But sure, let’s make homeschoolers follow the same playbook that’s failing 43% of black and 37% of Hispanic students in English, per JerseyCAN’s 2022 report. Because that’s the gold standard we’re all chasing.
The good news is that, nationwide, 40% of eighth graders tested below the NAEP’s Basic level in understanding U.S. history in 2022, a decline that’s been in effect for over a decade. So most won’t remember any of this, moving forward.
All this, while homeschoolers typically score far above public-schooled kids, especially in minority communities. It makes you wonder if New Jersey is really desirous of educating their youth, or just resentful of being shown up, like a classroom bully who’s too stupid to do his homework, so he steals the class genius’s backpack.
And lunch money. There’s a lot of money in education, especially if instead of educating, you’re just regulating, instead.
Which brings us to Assembly Bill 5796 from Assemblyman Cody D. Miller (D-Turnersville) and Assemblyman Stanley, who seem to think homeschoolers all lock their kids in their basements. This bill mandates an annual “wellness check” by a public school official. Never mind that a 2022 study found no higher rates of abuse among homeschooled kids compared to public school students. Facts? Pfft. New Jersey’s too busy playing Nanny McPhee to care. Let’s just hope that the individual assigned to report on the homeschooling family isn’t anything like the Middlesex, New Jersey high school teacher who was recently arrested on charges of creating and possessing child sexual abuse material. According to St. Thomas Aquinas School, their teacher “was subject to the required criminal and background checks… mandated by the state...”
Meanwhile, the state’s public schools—those shining beacons of safety—are underfunded by $5,000 per pupil in over 100,000 kids’ schools, per a 2018 report. And let’s not forget the teacher shortage so bad they had to scrap the edTPA test in 2022 and the Praxis Core in 2025. Elon Musk nailed it on X: “So teachers don’t need to know how to read in New Jersey? Seems like that would make it challenging to teach kids how to read.” But sure, let’s send those same officials to judge your parenting.
Here’s the real gag: New Jersey’s one of just 12 states that doesn’t already make homeschoolers jump through hoops. No registration, no mandatory tests, no bureaucrats sniffing around your lesson plans. And with 94,518 homeschooled kids in 2022, per the National Home Education Research Institute, parents are clearly making it work. Why? Because they’re not buying the state’s “thorough and efficient” education promise from the 1875 constitution—a promise that’s been broken since it was made, according to Robinson v. Cahill, which exposed unequal funding in the ‘70s. Fast-forward to 2025, and the state’s still shortchanging urban districts while preaching equity.
Parents choose homeschooling because they know their kids better than any Trenton suit ever could and they can’t trust the government not to turn their children into slaves of the State. Maybe they want real math, not climate change word problems. Maybe they see teachers bailing faster than rats from a sinking ship and think it’s a sign for them, too. Maybe these freedom-minded parents barely managed to escape their own schooling/brainwashing to see the grift of schooling and want something better for their own children.
And maybe the bureaucrats hate the idea of relinquishing power, so they expand it, instead.
While lawmakers high-five over “protecting” kids, they’re ignoring their own dumpster fire of a system. New Jersey’s new bills are like that cousin who shows up to Thanksgiving with a half-eaten, store-bought pie and a lecture on etiquette. They are a masterclass in irony: regulate homeschoolers to align with standards your own schools can’t meet, demand oversight from officials who can’t pass a basic skills test, empower potential perverts to administer “well-checks,” and call it progress. If these bills pass, expect homeschoolers to fight back like Spartacus in his glory. And they will understand that historical reference (unlike the rest of the state.)
Sam Sorbo, founder, They’re YOUR Kids Foundation.

Image from Grok.