More than a quarter of a million Texans want to take part in next year’s [2026-27] private school voucher program. It uses taxpayer dollars to fund private and home school expenses. The number of applicants far exceeds the $1 billion cap which lawmakers established with the approval of Senate Bill 2 in April 2025. So the state will have to use a lottery system to distribute the estimated 90,000 to 100,000 vouchers.
Historically, educators across the country have pitched the idea of school voucher programs as a great way to provide economically-challenged families a chance for quality education options for their children who currently attend public schools. As Texas Public Radio reports, data released so far by the comptroller shows 35% of students come from households that make at or below $66,000 per year for a family of four. Another 37% make between $66,000 and $165,000 per year.
The Texas voucher program announced that priority is given to low-income families and special education students. Yet studies reveal student voucher scholarships often don’t cover enough of the costs for poor families to pay the difference in tuition and related school expenses.
The result? Researchers say over time, as vouchers have grown in popularity, they have largely evolved into subsidies for middle-class families. That’s the conclusion reached in The School Voucher Illusion: Exposing The Pretense of Equity, released in 2023, and written by authors considers some of the leading scholars and national experts in the field of education policy and research. They include Kevin Welner , Gary Orfield, and Luis A. Huerta.
The Texas comptroller’s latest data also shows white families represented the largest group of applicants, nearly three quarters of them, already had kids in private or home schools. Critics also fear ballooning costs of Texas’ private school voucher program once the current $1 billion cap expires. And looking at the fine print of the legislation, there may be reason for concern. The voucher law’s Fiscal Note assumes the cost of the Education Savings Account (ESA) Program to cost $3.3 billion in fiscal year 2028, $3.7 billion in 2029, and $4.8 billion in 2030, “although, the ultimate costs of the ESA program would be limited to the amount appropriated by the Legislature.”
Arkansas Legislative Fiscal Session
- Vouchers -
School vouchers are also expected to be a hot topic in Arkansas when state legislators begin their fiscal session on Wednesday, April 8, 2026, at the state capitol. Little Rock Public Radio’s Josie Lenora and Daniel Breen delivered a brief summary on various topics of interest that are likely to come up. That includes the Education Freedom Account school choice voucher program, created by the Arkansas LEARNS Act, approved by lawmakers in March of 2023:
JOSIE LENORA/Politics & Government Reporter: “School Choice is one of the governor’s favorite issues. Three years ago she oversaw the passage of Arkansas Learns which gives tax money to parents to homeschool their kids or put them in a private school, or religious school. This year, roughly 44,000 kids are in the program which is the biggest number of participants by far. And the money adds up since most of those kids gets about $7,000 each.”
DANIEL BREEN/News Director: “And the governor has set aside millions of dollars for the program every year it’s existed, right?”
LENORA: “Yes. The first year in 2023, that cost about $297.5 million, with $150 million of that being new spending. And then again in 2024, the last budget session, the number went up by $65 million.”
BREEN: “And so, what are the figures this year?”
LENORA: “Last year, the legislature approved two tranches of money for [Arkansas] Learns, first on $187 million in April, $19 million in June, and $32 million in January. So for 2026 just the voucher program will cost $310 million. But the law is more expensive than that. The governor’s budget asks for $122 million more this year and asks for $70 million to be earmarked for the future.”
A state-mandated report on students in last year’s [2025 – Year 3] voucher program, released by the Arkansas Department of Education, showed that only 12% of those students came from public schools.
