Texas parents have until 11:59 p.m. Central Time on March 17 to apply for Texas Education Freedom Accounts (TEFA) — the state’s school voucher program for the 2026-27 school year. The Texas Legislature approved Senate Bill 2 in 2025 and provided $1 billion in funding to create the TEFA program. As The Texas Newsroom reports, since the Texas Comptroller’s Office began accepting those applications February 4, more than 160,000 students have applied. According to the office, priority will be given to “students with disabilities and students in low and middle-income families.” The voucher program provides $10,800. But this is where the problem lies for some candidates. Many of the private schools at the middle and high school levels have tuitions which cost more than that amount.
The Founder and executive director of Our Schools Our Democracy is Carrie Griffith. She says research from other states reveals that voucher programs usually are not utilized by public school families. “What winds up happening in practice is that the bulk of voucher users actually come from families who are already enrolled, who already have children enrolled in private schools. So it winds up being a subsidy for the wealthy, rather than any sort of support for the poor.” According to data from the Comptroller’s Office requested by the Texas Center for Voucher Transparency, 76% of current applicants are students who are not currently enrolled in public schools. And so far, about 65% of the voucher applicants come from families making above what's considered "low income" by the program — about $66,000 a year for a family of four. And around half of that 65% had significantly higher household incomes.
