Comment by PaulHoule

Circumstances can drag you into it.

I had trouble in the public schools because of bullying linked to my schizotypy (then undiagnosed despite what I'm told later was an exceptionally good psych eval for the late 1970s) They were going to drug me so my parents took me out for two years, I skipped three and was successful in high school. (In the single year my parents were able private school I was treated as I had some rights and dignity)

My son struggled in elementary school in a different way. Our school got labeled as a "persistently dangerous school" because we had an principal who, unlike others in the district, filled out the paperwork honestly (and got fired for it.) I lost faith in the superintendent when he first words in a meeting were "we're going to appeal it" as opposed to something like "we're going to do everything in our power to make this school safe".

I was active in the PTA (maybe the only dude; that same superintendent was dismissive of my wanting to be active in my son's education at the same time he welcomed the mother of a 'special' child who could call the state and light a fire under his ass to do so) and was very impressed with the teachers for one year, but the next year they seemed disorganized and the precipitating incident was when my son made a horribly violent doodle and the teacher wrote "Great!" with an underline on it. We didn't take him back the next day and kept him out for two years. We couldn't get him on a good reading program but we got him far above grade level on math with Kahn Academy. (As an adult circumstances got him interested in reading, now he's reading The Economist every week, books on chess openings, psych textbooks I loan him, etc.)

We never quite filled out the paperwork but two years later we slotted him into middle school where he was successful.