More than 229,000 students have applied to receive state funds for private education or homeschooling under Texas’ education savings account program, according to the state comptroller’s office.
By the numbers
State data indicates that the most applications have been submitted on behalf of students living in urban areas and the surrounding suburban communities. As of March 8, students living in Houston ISD’s boundaries led the pack with over 8,900 applications, followed by 6,700 applicants in Dallas ISD.
The majority of private schools participating in the program are also located in and around Texas’ largest cities, per a map on the program website.
The application data from the comptroller’s office, which oversees the program, show how many students living in each school district’s boundaries have applied. This includes students in private schools, public schools, open-enrollment charter schools and homeschool, as well as students who will start school in the fall.
The comptroller’s office said it did not include application data from districts with fewer than 30 applicants “to protect student privacy.”
About the programState lawmakers created the Texas Education Freedom Accounts program in 2025, and accepted students will receive funding for the 2026-27 school year.
Funding is capped at $1 billion for the first year of the program, meaning between 90,000 and 100,000 students will likely be accepted. With applications outpacing available funding, state law requires the comptroller’s office to accept students through a lottery system that prioritizes students with disabilities and low-income families.
Accepted students who are enrolling in private schools are set to receive $10,474 to spend on tuition and related expenses. The average cost of Texas private school tuition during the 2023-24 academic year was $10,965 for kindergarten through eighth grade students and $14,986 for high school students, according to the Texas Private Schools Association.
Homeschool students are eligible for $2,000 each, and students with disabilities can receive up to $30,000 each, depending on their individual needs.
Applications for the program will close at 11:59 p.m. March 31, after a Houston federal judge ordered a two-week extension to the application period over concerns that Islamic private schools had been excluded from the program, Community Impact reported.
More details
As of March 4, nearly three-quarters of the school-age children who had applied for education savings accounts were not enrolled in a public school, according to data shared by the Texas Center for Voucher Transparency, a public school advocacy group tracking the program’s rollout. The center said it obtained the data through a public records request to the comptroller’s office.
Of the first 152,000 program applicants:
- Roughly 118,000 were in grades 1-12
- Over 34,000 were seeking state subsidies to attend pre-K or kindergarten
The data shows that 71% of those applicants in first grade or above were not enrolled in a Texas public school during the 2026-26 school year. This means these students were attending a private school, were homeschooled or were not enrolled in school at all.
Of the first 200,000 applicants, about 72% were from low- or middle-income families, per state data. Under Senate Bill 2, the 2025 law that created the program, “low-income” is defined as families with annual household incomes at or below 200% of the federal poverty line, or about $66,000 for a family of four, while “middle-income” refers to families with incomes at or below 500% of the federal poverty line, or about $165,000 for a family of four.
