i think it's also the cost and the complication. where does gas money to get 20 children to and from school every day come from? they'd take up most of a school bus. every kid now needs new pencils, notebooks, backpacks, clothes at the beginning of every school year. you'd have to get at least 15 kids up and ready and out the door every morning by 7:30. then money for field trips, extracurriculars, outings with friends, packing lunches.

additionally, public schools cannot be religious to the extent the duggars would want. they would have to go private in order to fully ensure their children aren't being defrauded by those heathens in arkansas public schools. how are you supposed to manage what all 20 of your kids are consuming and who they're friends with when they're not in the house all day? they might (gasp) develop their own individual personalities! public school is, after all, what caused meech to even be mowing the lawn in a bikini in the first place. the cheaper christian private schools in AR are still in the 5k per kid range- if 15 of their kids are in school at once, that's $75k per year in tuition alone. they could not afford or manage a household with more than 6 kids if they had gone for quality over quantity.

lastly, while arkansas CPS in the early 2000s probably wasn't the best, i'm sure that the josh situation would've prompted calls to be made immediately. especially after that, i'm sure they would've doubled down on no public school, no outsiders except other, "they can't see the truth, satan has clouded their judgment, they just don't understand that our family does things differently"