Unfortunately, when I was a kid in NJ (born in 1972, so this would be 1980s), homeschooling wasn’t possible for me. Somewhere between 1979-1984 (I’ll have to ask), my mom tried to pull me out of school so she could homeschool me. But as high up in the chain she went, she got “No”, “no”, “Only religious nut jobs can get homeschooling”, etc. She tried two school years in a row to no effect. Ahead of her time I guess.

http://www.homeschoolinginnewjersey.com/…/statelaws.aspx

State v. Massa (1967)
In court, the parents were charged with failing to cause the child to attend school under the compulsory education law. The only issue before the court was whether the parents were providing equivalent instruction. The court held that the language under the compulsory education law, providing for equivalent instruction elsewhere than at school, required showing only academic equivalency and not equivalency of social development derived from group education. In educating the child at home, the parents were required to show only that “the instruction was academically equivalent to that provided in the local public school.”

Pierce v. Society of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary (1925)
In Pierce v. Society of the Sisters, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that “the fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments of this Union repose excludes any general power of the state to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. The child is not the creature of the state.”