For thousands of North Texas families, this month is when Texas’s new school choice program stopped being an application and became actual money. On July 1, the first payments landed in the accounts of students accepted into the Texas Education Freedom Accounts program for the 2026-27 school year. If your household applied last winter, is sitting on the waitlist, or is only now hearing about the whole thing, here is a plain explanation of how the program works, who got in, and what your options are from here.
What the program is
In 2025 the Legislature passed Senate Bill 2 and put $1 billion behind it, creating education savings accounts that families can use to pay for schooling outside the public system. Despite the “savings account” name, no one mails you a check. Accepted families spend the funds through an online marketplace on approved education expenses, private school tuition first among them, with the state watching how every dollar moves.
Unusually, the program is not run by the Texas Education Agency. The Texas Comptroller’s office administers it through the official program site, educationfreedom.texas.gov, with a contractor called Odyssey handling the family-facing portal.
What the accounts are worth
The amount depends on the student’s situation, and the figures for 2026-27 are set:
- Private school students: $10,474 for the year. State law pegs the award at 85 percent of the statewide average of state and local funding per public school student, and TEA calculated that figure for 2026-27.
- Students with disabilities: up to $30,000, for children with an individualized education program on file with TEA by the end of the application period, based on what their local district would receive to serve that IEP.
- Homeschooled students and others not enrolled in a participating school: $2,000 a year.
For private school students the money arrives in stages: 25 percent on July 1, another 25 percent on Oct. 1, and the remaining half on Feb. 1, 2027. Homeschool awards paid out in full on July 1.
Who got in, and how the lottery worked
Demand swamped the money. The application window ran Feb. 4 through March 31, 2026, and drew more than 274,000 applications statewide. Because applications exceeded funding, state law ranked applicants in priority tiers: first, children with disabilities from households at or below 500 percent of the federal poverty level; then households at or below 200 percent of the poverty line; then those between 200 and 500 percent; and last, higher-income households, whose share of program funds is capped at 20 percent.
The Comptroller announced the first round of awards on April 22, followed in early May by more than 53,000 additional awards to second-tier applicants, households at or below 200 percent of the poverty level, roughly $66,000 for a family of four. All told, more than 100,000 students have been awarded accounts in the program’s first year, and in late June the program announced over 5,000 more awards to students pulled off the waitlist. Every applicant’s status, award or waitlist position included, appears in their Odyssey portal.
Not everyone who applied was eligible. About 25,500 applications were rejected, most commonly over pre-K eligibility rules, or because income, citizenship or Texas residency could not be verified from the documents submitted. Appeals had a 30-day window from notification.
What the money can buy, and where
Funds flow through the program marketplace to approved expenses: tuition at participating private schools, plus other approved education costs such as tutoring and instructional materials, including approved career and technical education programs and online providers that have been accepted into the program. Participating schools must be accredited, Texas-based, and in operation at least two years, and they administer an annual norm-referenced test to participating students in grades 3-12.
For DFW families comparing options, the program runs a searchable finder map of participating schools and service providers, with new participants added on a rolling basis. Worth knowing before you fall in love with a school: an award does not guarantee admission, private schools keep their own admissions standards, and at many DFW campuses tuition runs well above $10,474, so budget for the gap.
If you are waitlisted, or missed the window entirely
The 2026-27 application period is closed, and the program has been clear that awards continue only as funding allows, so a waitlist spot may or may not convert this year. Waitlisted families were told their approximate position in May and should watch their email and portal for movement.
If you never applied, the play is patience and paperwork. The program maintains an interest list for the 2027-28 application cycle, and next year’s priority rules change in one important way: siblings of participating children move to the front of the line, followed by new applicants. Families already in the program do not reapply; participants in good standing continue automatically and simply confirm they want to stay.
One caution as the school year approaches: the only official sources for this program are the Comptroller’s program site and the Odyssey portal. Any call, text or “consultant” offering to secure or speed up an award for a fee is someone to hang up on.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. Figures are linked to their primary sources; where a claim could not be verified from the public record, we say so.
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