Texas TEFA 2026: What Homeschool Families Actually Get

What TEFA actually is

The Texas Education Freedom Accounts program (TEFA) started paying claims in the 2026-27 school year after Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 2 in May 2025. The legislature seeded it with $1 billion, carved from general revenue, enough to fund roughly 100,000 accounts in year one.

The program has three tiers:

• Private-school students: up to $10,474 per year (a figure tied to 85% of the state's average per-pupil funding).
• Students with an IEP on file: up to $30,000 per year, reserved for high-needs disability cases.
• Homeschool students: a flat $2,000 per year.

Homeschool families should read that last number carefully. We repeat it because we see it misstated in blog posts by people who should know better: Texas pays homeschool students one-fifth of what it pays private-school students, and it caps the benefit. The $2,000 does not scale with income, family size, or grade level. Every eligible homeschooled kid in Texas, kindergarten through senior year, gets the same $2,000.

Who qualifies

There are four doors into TEFA:

1. Texas residency. The student must live in Texas with a parent or legal guardian.
2. Age/grade. Kindergarten through 12th grade. The student must be at least 5 years old by September 1 of the funding year.
3. No concurrent public enrollment. You cannot collect TEFA funds while enrolled in a Texas public school. Withdraw first.
4. Application in the annual window. The 2026-27 window ran February 4 – March 31, 2026. The next window is expected around the same time in 2027.

No income cap. No prior public-school requirement. The law does include a priority order if applications exceed available slots — students with disabilities and low-income families get first claim — but in year one, applications did not exceed capacity for homeschool-track families, so every eligible applicant who made the deadline received funding.

One detail that surprises people: if you use TEFA funds, your child must take a nationally norm-referenced test annually (Stanford, Iowa, TerraNova, and similar all qualify) and submit results to your approved provider. Homeschool families who don't take TEFA funds don't have to test in Texas, ever. That annual test is the price of admission.

What the $2,000 actually buys

The Texas Comptroller publishes an expense category list, enforced by Odyssey, the program administrator. Approved categories for homeschool students include:

• Curriculum and textbooks — workbooks, digital courses, complete curriculum packages
• Tutoring services from qualified non-family providers
• Educational therapies — speech, occupational, applied behavior analysis, subject to documentation
• Testing fees for the required annual assessment
• Computer hardware and software, capped at 10% of the annual account ($200 max in year one)
• Transportation costs to approved providers — tutoring, co-ops, therapy
• STEM kits and educational materials
• Fees for educational trips to approved vendors

Ineligible: consumables beyond the curriculum (printer ink, paper, lunches), family-member payment (you can't pay yourself or a grandparent), entertainment subscriptions that aren't specifically educational, and non-educational field-trip fees.

Here's a realistic $2,000 homeschool budget under TEFA for a second-grade family, priced against 2026 vendor sites:

The Odyssey marketplace: how funds flow

Odyssey is not a debit card. It's a closed-loop procurement system. Families don't receive $2,000 as cash. They get $2,000 of purchasing power inside the Odyssey portal, to be spent in two ways:

1. Direct purchase through the marketplace. Pick a vendor on the approved list, check out, funds are drawn down automatically.
2. Reimbursement for eligible out-of-pocket spending. Upload the receipt, wait for review (Odyssey cites 7–14 business days for homeschool claims), get funds credited back to your account balance.

Vendors have to apply separately to join the Texas marketplace. The Comptroller announced in December 2025 that "hundreds" of Texas schools and curriculum providers had signed up, though Odyssey has not published a complete vendor list. In practice, by the April 2026 launch week, most of the major homeschool curriculum publishers (Abeka, BJU Press, Sonlight, The Good and the Beautiful, Memoria Press, Masterbooks, Logic of English, All About Learning Press) were listed or had pending applications.

If a vendor you want isn't in the marketplace, the reimbursement route still works — but you're fronting the cash and hoping Odyssey agrees the purchase is eligible. That's the flexibility trade-off.

The $8,474 funding gap

Texas pays private-school students $10,474. It pays homeschool students $2,000. That's an $8,474 gap — and it is not accidental.

The gap reflects a policy judgment: the legislature funded TEFA to expand private-school access first, with a smaller allowance for homeschool families as a political gesture. The private-school number is calibrated to roughly cover annual tuition at a mid-tier Texas parochial school. The homeschool number is calibrated to cover curriculum and some outside services, but not to compensate parents for their teaching time.

A Texas homeschool family running a Sonlight + math program + outside art class + tutoring model might spend $3,500–$5,000 per year on a single kid. TEFA covers 40–60% of that. Families running a free-curriculum model (Good and the Beautiful digital, Khan Academy, library-first) will often find TEFA covers 100% and leaves room for extras.

We don't recommend signing up for TEFA if you actively don't want government oversight of your curriculum choices. The Odyssey approval process, the annual testing requirement, and the receipt-review workflow are meaningful administrative overhead. Families who value homeschool independence and can afford the $2,000 out of pocket may prefer to opt out.

Timeline + deadlines

For 2026-27 (the current year) — it's too late to apply.

For 2027-28, the Comptroller's office has indicated a similar February–March window. Families should watch educationfreedom.texas.gov in January 2027 for the exact opening date.

How Texas compares to other ESA states

We did a side-by-side for homeschool families in the four states with the biggest ESA footprints in 2026:

On a pure-dollar basis, Texas homeschool families get less than Arizona, Florida, or West Virginia. On a compliance-burden basis, Texas sits in the middle: less oversight than Florida's Student Learning Plan requirement, similar to Arizona's expense-review model.

Top 10 TEFA-approved curricula by category

Based on curriculum vendors with active Texas marketplace listings as of April 2026:

Language Arts / Reading

1. The Good and the Beautiful (digital free, print $33–$90/course)
2. Logic of English Foundations ($149+ per level)
3. All About Reading / All About Spelling ($140+ per level)

Math

1. Math-U-See (complete set ~$175/level)
2. Singapore Math ($40–$80/grade)
3. Saxon Math ($100–$160/grade)

Complete programs

1. Abeka K5 Complete Kit (~$706 accredited, $677 unaccredited)
2. BJU Press K5 Complete Textbook Kit (~$500–$650)
3. Sonlight Kindergarten All-Subjects Package (~$700)
4. Memoria Press Kindergarten Customizable Set (~$540)

Prices are as published by each vendor as of April 2026 and will fluctuate.