If you look at my essay again, you’ll see that Amish kids can’t read in English to any significant level at all. Again, that is the point of what I wrote. Almost every Amish child in the United States is deprived of even they most basic education. Amish parents are nothing like you. You went to great lengths to educate your child. Amish parents do not educate their children. Torah didn’t run away to pursue her love of theatre. She ran away because she believed (as I do) that she had a right to an education.

Yes, some kids get left behind in public schools. That has nothing to do with my article, which isn’t about kids doing poorly. It’s about kids not being offered any education at all and having zero preparation to live a life outside of insular religious communities.

You home-schooled your son so he could get a good job or go to college if he wanted to. Amish kids can’t get good jobs or go to college, because none of them go to high school and none of them get home-schooled at a high-school level. School ends for them at 14 — before most of them even learn to read and write well in English.