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The $8,474 gap at the heart of Texas TEFA
The Texas Education Freedom Account closed its first application window on March 31. More than 274,000 students applied, against $1 billion appropriated by the Legislature (Texas Comptroller, April 2, 2026; educationfreedom.texas.gov). In our assessment, the program had a strong launch by any headline measure.
Read the fine print, and a different story emerges.
A private-school student in Texas will receive $10,474 for tuition and approved expenses in the 2026-27 school year. A homeschool student in the same program will receive $2,000 (educationfreedom.texas.gov). The gap is $8,474 per child for 2026-27, and it was not an accounting accident. SB 2, which Governor Abbott signed on May 3, 2025 (bill history), sets the private-school transfer at 85 percent of the estimated statewide average of state and local funding per student, which the Texas Education Agency calculated as $10,474 (educationfreedom.texas.gov), and limits the homeschool transfer to $2,000.
For scale, Memoria Press lists its kindergarten through eighth-grade Classical Core curriculum sets at current prices from $434.80 to $912.62 (memoriapress.com, retrieved October 2026).
Texas selected Odyssey in October 2025 as the certified educational assistance organization for the program (Texas Comptroller, October 6, 2025). In its April 2 release, the Comptroller's office said it was working with Odyssey to verify applicant information before notifying families of awards later that month and distributing funds to student accounts in July (Texas Comptroller, April 2, 2026).
Our take. The $2,000 homeschool limit in SB 2 is a starting point, not a settled number, and it will be litigated politically as soon as the second application window opens. Watch for an amendment in the 2027 session that either raises the homeschool amount or ties it to a percentage of the private-school figure. In the meantime, Texas families who missed the March 31 window should treat the 2026-27 year as a planning year: document expenses, join a co-op that is applying for approval as a program provider, and watch educationfreedom.texas.gov for the 2027-28 application period.
The gap is a policy choice. It can be changed the same way it was made.
Curriculum reviews, and what we are adding
Cathy Duffy publishes homeschool curriculum reviews in her 103 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum book and on the Cathy Duffy Homeschool Curriculum Reviews site at cathyduffyreviews.com. In our assessment, they are the closest thing the sector has to Consumer Reports.
The site's front page lists its latest homeschool reviews (cathyduffyreviews.com).
Publishers in the market include Master Books, BJU Press, and Abeka, along with Blossom & Root, The Good and the Beautiful, Gather 'Round, Torchlight, and Build Your Library. Online options include Outschool, which lists live online classes for ages 3 to 18, and Night Zookeeper, a reading and writing program for ages 6 to 12. AI tools include Khan Academy's Khanmigo, MagicSchool, and Synthesis Tutor.
In our assessment, the problem is not a shortage of options but a shortage of trustworthy signal: a five-star Amazon review of a boxed curriculum tells a buyer very little, and a blogger's affiliate-linked "10 best" roundup tells less.
What we're doing about it. Every Homeschool will publish one curriculum review every week, using a published rubric: scope, rigor, time-to-teach, parent load, secular/faith framing, cost per child, and resale value. Reviews will name what the product is bad at, not only what it is good at. We will disclose review copies when publishers send them. Some retailer and publisher links on this site carry disclosed affiliate tags, and rankings and coverage are unaffected; see how Every Homeschool makes money. Our first full review, shipping next Monday, is The Good and the Beautiful Level 3 Language Arts against Logic of English Foundations. Send a note to reviews@everyhomeschool.com if there is a curriculum you want us to prioritize.
West Virginia Hope goes universal
In our assessment, the most consequential ESA change this spring happened in West Virginia, where the Hope Scholarship began accepting applications on March 2 for the 2026-27 school year from every K-12 student eligible to enroll in a West Virginia public school, including existing homeschool and private-school students (hopescholarshipwv.gov).
Before 2026-27, state law required that a child be enrolled full-time in a public school, for at least 45 calendar days of the term at the time of application or for the whole previous term, or be eligible to enter kindergarten (W. Va. Code §18-31-2). Effective July 1, 2026, that prior-public requirement is gone: a child qualifies if enrolled, eligible to be enrolled, or required to be enrolled in a kindergarten or public school program at the time of application. Any West Virginia K-12 student who is eligible to enroll in a public school can apply, including existing homeschool students who were not previously eligible (Hope Scholarship FAQ).
The award is expected to be $5,435.62 per student for 2026-27, and it varies each year with state aid funding per pupil (Hope Scholarship FAQ). That is nearly three times the Texas homeschool tier for a state with less than a fifth of Texas's population (U.S. Census Bureau). New applications opened March 2 and run through June 15 for 100 percent of the scholarship. Applications from June 16 through September 15 receive 75 percent, from September 16 through November 30 receive 50 percent, and from December 1 through February 28, 2027 receive 25 percent; later applicants receive no funding for 2026-27 (hopescholarshipwv.gov).
Qualifying expenses include curriculum, tutoring, educational therapies, and nonpublic online learning programs (W. Va. Code §18-31-7). Purchases are made through the Hope online portal and pre-approved by the Treasurer's Office. Reimbursement requests, limited to the cases the Board's policy allows, must be filed in the portal within 90 days of purchase with an itemized invoice and proof of payment, and from 2026-27 funds are deposited in four quarterly installments (Hope Scholarship FAQ). The program is administered by the West Virginia Hope Scholarship Board, which the State Treasurer chairs (W. Va. Code §18-31-3).
Our take. West Virginia has quietly built the cleanest homeschool ESA in the country: single tier, universal eligibility, and reasonable paperwork. If you live in West Virginia and have not applied, the June 15 full-funding deadline is the one to hit.
Charlotte Mason, for families who have never heard the name
Charlotte Mason's six-volume series begins with Home Education. AmblesideOnline's introduction describes the method as using living books, narration, nature observation, and short lessons, and its paraphrase of her 20 principles begins with the statement that children are born persons.
Three modern curricula built on her method are AmblesideOnline, A Gentle Feast, and Simply Charlotte Mason. AmblesideOnline is a free implementation, with a book list organized year-by-year at amblesideonline.org. A Gentle Feast and Simply Charlotte Mason sell paid curricula built on Mason's method, and Simply Charlotte Mason describes its plans as open-and-go lesson plans.
In practice, lessons are short, with AmblesideOnline advising 10 to 20 minutes for younger children and 20 to 40 minutes for older children. The AmblesideOnline introduction describes narration, in which the child tells back a story, as taking the place of comprehension exercises or composition, and copywork as serving handwriting, spelling, and grammar modeling. It also says the students in Mason's schools took daily nature walks and recorded their observations in notebooks.
The method is used in both secular and Christian curricula. AmblesideOnline and Simply Charlotte Mason each describe their curriculum as Christian. Wildwood Curriculum and Blossom and Root each describe their curriculum as secular.
What it is not. According to AmblesideOnline's introduction, Charlotte Mason is not unschooling.
Dispatch
Johns Hopkins Homeschool Hub. The Homeschool Hub at Johns Hopkins's Institute for Education Policy, which compiles the homeschool counts that states report, says homeschool student participation currently hovers between 5 and 6 percent (Homeschool Hub).
Illinois HB 2827 status. Illinois House Bill 2827, the Homeschool Act, as amended on April 11, 2025, would have required homeschool parents to submit a notification form each year and to produce an educational portfolio within 10 business days when a truant officer requests one during a truancy investigation (House Floor Amendment 2). The General Assembly's bill status shows its last action as the April 11, 2025 re-referral to the House Rules Committee, and its witness-slip count stands at 40,536 opponents and 1,057 proponents.
Great Homeschool Conventions, spring wrap. Cincinnati (April 9-11) closed the first three stops of the five-city 2026 GHC circuit, after Greenville, South Carolina (March 19-21) and St. Charles, Missouri (March 26-28), with Ontario, California (June 18-20) and Round Rock, Texas (July 9-11) still ahead (greathomeschoolconventions.com).
Every Homeschool Weekly is published every Monday at everyhomeschool.com. Forward this to a friend. Reply with news tips, policy updates, or curriculum you want us to review: editor@everyhomeschool.com.
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