Texas Education Freedom Accounts (TEFA)

Texas Education Freedom Accounts (TEFA) give eligible families state funds to put toward private school tuition, tutoring, curriculum, and other approved education costs. If you’re a Texas parent weighing your options, including a private high quality early education at Atelier Preescolar here’s exactly how the program works and how the application process runs from start to finish.

What Is a Texas Education Freedom Account?

A Texas Education Freedom Account is a state-funded education savings account. Once a child is awarded one, the family can direct that money toward tuition at a participating private school, homeschool materials, tutoring, or other approved services, rather than the funding following the child into a public school assignment.

The program was created by Senate Bill 2 in 2025 and is administered by the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, with a company called Odyssey running the family-facing application portal and account platform. Funding for the first year, 2026-27, totaled $1 billion, which the Comptroller’s office has called the largest day-one launch of a school choice program in the country.

Who May Be Eligible?

Eligibility itself is broad. Under the law, any child who lives in Texas and is a U.S. citizen or was lawfully admitted into the country can apply, regardless of household income or whether the child currently attends public, private, or home school.

Getting an award is a separate question from being eligible to apply. Because demand outpaced funding in year one, the Comptroller’s office prioritized applicants using a four-tier structure based on household income relative to the Federal Poverty Level (FPL), plus disability status:

  • Tier 1: Students with a qualifying disability from households at or below 500% FPL. These families were funded first, close to 30,000 applicants in the first cycle, along with their eligible siblings.

  • Tier 2: Students from households at or below 200% FPL who don’t qualify for Tier 1. These students went through a lottery, assigned a random sequential position, with awards going out in that order until funding ran out.

  • Tier 3: Students from households above 200% and at or below 500% FPL.

  • Tier 4: Students from households above 500% FPL. Within this tier, students with prior Texas public-school enrollment during the 2024-25 school year received additional priority.

If a child is accepted into the program, eligible siblings who applied in the same period are automatically accepted as well, so families don’t end up with kids split across different tiers or outcomes.

Is the TEFA Application Open Right Now?

No. The application window for the 2026-27 school year ran from February 4 through March 17, 2026, then got a two-week extension to March 31 under a federal court order. That window is closed, and the Comptroller’s office has said there’s no late application process for students who missed it.

More than 274,000 students applied in that first cycle, well beyond the number of available spots, so the program moved to a lottery for most applicants. As of late June 2026, nearly 110,000 students had received TEFA awards, although the number of active awards was slightly lower after some families opted out. Tens of thousands remain on the waitlist, and the Comptroller’s office continues awarding additional students as families decline, opt out, or fail to confirm enrollment by their deadline.

The next application window will be for the 2027-28 school year. The Comptroller’s office hasn’t published exact dates for that cycle yet, so treat any specific date you see for 2027-28 as unconfirmed until it’s posted on educationfreedom.texas.gov. Families who want to apply next time can sign up for email updates through that site Texas Education Freedom Account page periodically.

What to Prepare Before You Apply

Even with the application closed right now, this is the right time to get your paperwork in order for the next cycle. Based on what the 2026-27 process required, families should have ready:

  • Social Security number or ITIN for the parent or guardian, and a Social Security number for the child

  • Proof of Texas residency, such as a Texas driver’s license or state ID number

  • IRS Form 1040 filed for tax year 2024 or 2025, on which the child is claimed as a dependent, since household income determines priority tier

  • Disability documentation, if applicable: for the additional funding of up to $30,000, an eligible student attending a participating private school needs a qualifying IEP on file with the Texas Education Agency by the applicable deadline

  • Your child’s Texas Student Unique ID, sometimes called a UID

If your child has never attended a Texas public school, they likely don’t have a Unique ID yet. The application itself can generate one, so this isn’t a reason to hold off on applying once the window opens.

 

Step-by-Step: How the Application Process Works:

Here’s how families moved through the process during the 2026-27 cycle, which gives a solid preview of what to expect next time:

  1. Create an Odyssey account through the state portal at educationfreedom.texas.gov once the window opens.

  2. Enter your child’s information, including their school district, grade level, and Unique ID (or generate one if needed).

  3. Report household income and any disability documentation, which the system uses to sort applicants into one of the four priority tiers.

  4. Choose an educational setting, such as private school or homeschool. This choice becomes final once submitted, so confirm it before you click through.

  5. Upload supporting documents in PDF, JPG, PNG, or HEIC format, each under 10 MB.

  6. Review and submit. The Comptroller’s guide estimates the whole process takes 10 to 20 minutes depending on how many documents you’re uploading.

  7. Wait for your lottery position and notification. In the first cycle, this arrived in early April, roughly two weeks after the window closed.

You don’t need to have a specific private school locked in before you apply. You can indicate your intended school during the application or add it afterward, as long as the school is an approved TEFA participant. If you’re already looking at options, our admissions page walks through what to expect when you’re ready to apply directly to a campus.

What Happens After You Submit

Once applications close, the Comptroller’s office runs the lottery and sends out funding notifications. In year one, that happened in early April. Notifications tell you whether your child was awarded, waitlisted, or found ineligible.

If your child is marked ineligible or you disagree with the priority tier or funding amount, you get 30 days from the notification date to file an appeal. Appeals exist to correct program errors, not to submit information you forgot to include the first time around, so it’s worth double-checking your application before you hit submit rather than counting on the appeal process to fix gaps later.

Awarded families then need to confirm their educational setting and, for private-school students, have enrollment confirmed by the participating school. For the 2026-27 cycle, students whose schools confirmed enrollment by June 15 were eligible for the first installment on July 1, while confirmations completed by July 31 moved into the mid-August funding cycle. Waitlisted families got pulled in throughout the summer as other families declined, opted out, or missed their deadline.