Texas TEFA 2026: What Homeschool Families Actually Get

What TEFA actually is

The Texas Education Freedom Accounts program (TEFA) was created by Senate Bill 2 in the 89th Texas Legislature, passed May 3, 2025 and effective September 1, 2025. The Texas Comptroller’s final-rules press release confirms the program is administered by the Comptroller of Public Accounts with an initial $1 billion appropriation and roughly 100,000 accounts available in year one.

The program has three funding tiers:

• Accredited private-school students: $10,474 per year for 2026-27, set by the Texas Education Agency at 85% of the estimated statewide average of state and local funding per student in average daily attendance.
• Students with an IEP on file: up to $30,000 per year, with the allotment based on the funding the student’s district would receive for IEP services.
• Homeschool students: a flat $2,000 per year, for children educated at home or not enrolled in a Texas public school.

The $2,000 homeschool amount does not scale with income, family size, or grade level. Every eligible homeschooled child, kindergarten through twelfth grade, receives the same $2,000.

Who qualifies

Per the TEFA eligibility page and the Parent Application Guide, there are four gating criteria:

1. Texas residency. The student must reside in Texas with a parent or legal guardian.
2. Age and grade. Kindergarten through twelfth grade, with the student at least five years old on September 1 of the funding year.
3. No concurrent public enrollment. A child cannot receive TEFA funds while enrolled in a Texas public school; withdrawal must precede participation.
4. Application in the annual window. For 2026-27, the window was February 4 – March 31, 2026. The next window is expected to open in early 2027.

There is no income cap and no prior-public-school requirement. SB 2 does establish a priority order if applications exceed capacity , students with disabilities and low-income families receive higher priority. For homeschool-track applicants in 2026-27, Comptroller materials indicate applications did not exceed homeschool capacity.

Families who accept TEFA funds must complete a nationally norm-referenced achievement test annually (Iowa, Stanford, TerraNova, CLT, and other approved tests) and submit results. Texas homeschoolers who do not enroll in TEFA face no state testing requirement, a consequence of Texas Education Agency v. Leeper (Tex. 1994). Annual testing is the compliance cost of participating in TEFA.

What the $2,000 actually buys

The Texas Comptroller’s final-rules release and the TEFA program portal describe approved expense categories for homeschool accounts. These typically include:

• Curriculum and instructional materials. textbooks, workbooks, digital courses, complete curriculum packages.
• Tutoring from qualified non-family providers.
• Educational therapies. speech, occupational, and similar services with documentation.
• Testing fees for the required annual nationally norm-referenced assessment.
• Technology. computer hardware and software, subject to category caps set in Comptroller rules.
• Transportation to approved providers such as tutors, co-ops, or therapy sessions.
• Educational field trips and supplies through approved vendors.

Ineligible categories include consumables unrelated to curriculum, payments to family members, entertainment subscriptions, and non-educational field-trip costs.

A plausible $2,000 TEFA budget for a second-grade homeschool family, priced against April 2026 vendor sites:

Prices are as published by each vendor as of April 2026 and subject to change. Reimbursement eligibility is set by the Comptroller, not by the vendor.

The Odyssey marketplace: how funds flow

Odyssey serves as the program administrator. It is a closed-loop procurement and reimbursement system rather than a debit card. Families access $2,000 of purchasing power through the Odyssey portal, deployed two ways:

1. Direct purchase through the marketplace, select an approved vendor, check out, and the cost draws from the account balance.
2. Reimbursement for eligible out-of-pocket purchases, upload the receipt, Odyssey reviews, and funds credit back to the account balance.

Vendors apply separately to join the Texas marketplace. The Texas Comptroller’s December 2025 announcement stated that hundreds of Texas schools and providers had enrolled; Odyssey has not published a complete public vendor list. Families whose preferred curriculum is not listed can use reimbursement, at the risk of Odyssey declining eligibility after purchase.

The $8,474 funding gap

Texas pays private-school students $10,474 per year. It pays homeschool students $2,000. That $8,474 gap is statutory, not administrative.

The gap reflects a legislative policy judgment embedded in SB 2. The private-school figure is tied to 85% of statewide per-pupil funding, calibrated to cover a meaningful portion of private-school tuition. The homeschool figure is set by the legislature at $2,000 per child and does not scale with enrollment or cost.

A Texas homeschool family running a published curriculum (Sonlight, Abeka, or similar) plus outside art class and tutoring for a single child can reasonably spend $3,500–$5,000 per year, per published vendor pricing. TEFA covers a meaningful fraction of that. Families using primarily free digital resources and library materials often find $2,000 covers the full annual budget.

TEFA participation also introduces oversight: annual nationally norm-referenced testing, expense-category approval by Odyssey, and receipt review. Families who prefer independence from program oversight may prefer to pay out of pocket. The trade-off is real and worth pricing honestly against each family’s own budget.

Timeline and deadlines

For 2026-27, the application window has closed. Per Odyssey’s published Texas timeline and the TEFA program page:

For 2027-28, the Comptroller has indicated a similar February–March window. Families should monitor educationfreedom.texas.gov beginning in January 2027 for the confirmed opening date.

How Texas compares to other ESA states

Homeschool amounts vary widely across the four largest 2026 ESA programs:

On dollar amount per homeschool student, Texas is the lowest of the four. On compliance burden, Texas sits in the middle: less oversight than Florida’s student learning plan requirement, comparable to Arizona’s expense-review model.

Approved curricula by category

The following vendors had active Texas marketplace presence or active applications as of April 2026 based on vendor communications and Comptroller materials. Families should confirm each vendor’s status at checkout . Odyssey’s approved vendor list continues to expand.

Language arts / reading

1. The Good and the Beautiful , digital materials free, print titles priced per publisher site
2. Logic of English Foundations
3. All About Reading / All About Spelling

Math

1. Math-U-See
2. Singapore Math
3. Saxon Math

Complete programs

1. Abeka K5 Complete Kit
2. BJU Press K5 Complete Textbook Kit
3. Sonlight Kindergarten All-Subjects Package
4. Memoria Press Kindergarten Customizable Set

Retail prices are as published by each vendor as of April 2026 and subject to change. TEFA eligibility for specific SKUs is set by Odyssey and the Texas Comptroller, not by the publisher.