Not all families have a parent who can or chooses to dedicate the time necessary to successfully or even spectacularly homeschool their children. If you need two incomes to keep your family surviving, you don’t home school. And some well-to-do families have two parents who choose to work at a fulfilling career and move to a typically expensive area with good public schools which their children attend.
I will really shock you and tell you that high quality day care from age 2 has made both my children both academically successful and extremely well socialized. My 2 year old thrived in a high quality (government agency internal) day care environment since he was extremely stimulated by his peers and an extremely enriched social, academic, and physical environment. Similarly my kids have thrived in a high quality and highly ranked school district that also lacks the ridiculous competitiveness that some people have described here. They have genuine friends who rank with them in the top of their class and they are supportive of each other and they engage in ECs that actually interest them. They are both very social and would hate being away from that. They probably don’t have much interest in hearing me drone on about american history or even drill them in math (even though I could teach calc and beyond). So neither side is suited well to home schooling and both are suited well to an excellent public school experience.
The very good school districts that dot the US provide a good environment and plenty of academic options and experiences for a top 5% kid. It when you get into the top 1% or top 0.01% kids that there may be some drastic measured required, whether opening a cafe at MIT or sending your kid to college at 15 or turning your kid into your career.
There are very few kids who are truly special snowflakes like this MIT kid. If you have one and you can both afford to and choose to quit your career to make them stay special and maybe make them 10% better so they can find that cure for hunger in the world, go ahead.
Same if it makes you terrifically happy.
But I think successful homeschoolers and top high schools share one characteristic, they are simply not the problem. I think parents who can follow a good HS curriculum or an enhanced curriculum and provide their kids a good or stellar education are not a problem.
It is the poor performing schools and the ignorant HSers who are not serving the kids. I might even argue for arguing sake that if you live in a poor performing school district and do not engage with the public school but instead coddle your snowflake, you might be missing a chance to contribute more to society by not say teaching or volunteering.
Just saying …
And sad ? No, I think this kid is doing great because he is just not like most people. If he wants to play with or date or play basketball with 16 year olds, they are living right there in Cambridge, but my guess is he wants to be in a robotics lab with 20 year olds, because he is special and his mind is developed in ways that we just don’t understand. And it seems he wants MIT and probably will get exactly what he wants out of it. His family is there too (a 15 year old hundreds of miles from home would be more disturbing, a 17 year old ,not so much).
I had friends who did not enjoy HS and went to Ivies at 17, they did great and lead successful lives now. Different strokes …
It would be sad to take your top 5% kid and somehow feel that you need to accelerate them beyond the CalcBC level … unless that is truly what they want. My kids were happy in CalcBC + all the other parts of HS life and will do fine …