New Jersey is one of only 10 states that does not require parents to notify their local school district if they choose to home-school their children. Those parents would like to keep it that way.

The government is right to butt out. Parents should be in charge of their children’s education, and home schooling is an option many in the state have chosen — up to 70,000 kids, according to a national home-schooling research group.

In our Monday news story on home schooling, a spokeswoman from the New Jersey Education Association said that group is concerned because "there’s no oversight, there’s no way to ensure a child receives a quality education on a day-to-day basis." Maybe not. But we agree with leaving home schooling as is. We support the public school system, but we also favor school choice. The more choices, the better.

One place the government could get involved in home schooling without interfering with parental control would be to make extracurricular programs more accessible. Decisions on whether home-schooled children are allowed to participate in afterschool programs are left up to the local districts. That, too, should be a decision for the parents, not school officials.

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