Voucher in Hand, No School to Spend It On: Why Thousands of Texas Families Are Returning Disability Aid

Texas’s brand-new private school voucher program just got its first real report card — and it’s complicated.

The Texas Education Freedom Accounts, or TEFA, finished its inaugural year with more than 270,000 applications for a program built to fund about 85,000 students. More than 100,000 kids are sitting on a waitlist. And this month, new state Comptroller Don Huffines asked lawmakers to double the program’s budget to $2 billion.

Supporters call it the biggest school-choice launch in American history. Critics are asking the question that has followed voucher programs everywhere: who is this really for?

By the numbers

The comptroller’s office released its first annual report to the Legislature in early August, and the numbers are striking. Of the more than 270,000 applications, 248,000 students were deemed eligible — but only 85,344 accounts got funded for the 2026-27 school year. The legislature originally allocated $1 billion through Senate Bill 2, signed by Gov. Greg Abbott in May 2025.

On equity, the report cuts against the stereotype that vouchers only serve the wealthy: nearly 80% of funded students come from families earning below 200% of the federal poverty level — 68,000 of the 85,344. Fewer than 30 funded students came from households earning more than 500% of the poverty line. And almost 25% of participating students have a qualifying disability, a group the legislature explicitly prioritized.

The racial breakdown: 34,792 funded students are white, 24,043 are Hispanic, 11,570 are Black, 10,051 are multiracial, and 4,305 are Asian or Pacific Islander. Houston ISD leads all Texas districts with 3,327 participating students, followed by Dallas ISD at 2,645 and San Antonio’s Northside ISD at 2,271.

But who was already in private school?

Here’s where it gets thorny. KPRC in Houston reported this month that data shows most applicants so far were already enrolled in private schools — raising the question of whether public dollars are subsidizing tuition families were already paying, rather than opening doors for kids stuck in struggling public schools.

Program spokesperson Travis Pillow didn’t dodge it. He told KPRC that many of those families are making real financial sacrifices to afford tuition — and pointed back to the legislature’s priorities: students with disabilities and low- and middle-income families.

Both things can be true at once: a family can be lower-income and still be stretching to pay private tuition. But it’s a fair question whether a program designed as an escape hatch is functioning partly as a rebate. The next round of data will have to answer it more fully.

The $2 billion ask

On September 9, Huffines — who took office as comptroller in August and has refused his state salary — told lawmakers the program needs another $980 million just to clear the waitlist, plus $82 million for newly eligible siblings of enrolled students. That’s on top of the original $1 billion. He also flagged that up to 4,000 students are expected to upgrade from $2,000 homeschool vouchers to roughly $10,000 private-school vouchers, which will cost more too.

The waitlist, by the way, is officially “the longest school choice waitlist in the country,” per Pillow. The comptroller’s office says it will announce a new application window in the coming weeks.

The amounts: private-school vouchers are worth roughly $10,000 — about 85% of what the state spends per public-school student — while homeschool accounts get around $2,000 for approved supplies and services.

The fine print families are tripping on

Getting approved for TEFA money, it turns out, is only half the battle. KPRC’s ENOUGH investigation found families confused about what the funds can actually buy — because the money only works with approved vendors on the state’s Odyssey platform.

Take Houston dad Joseph Parle, who was approved for the $2,000 homeschool option hoping to use it on his son’s dual-credit college coursework. TEFA’s own materials listed a “dual-credit course at a higher education provider” as an eligible expense. But when Parle called, he learned the college had to be an approved Odyssey vendor — and customer support told him they didn’t think any dual-credit colleges were on the platform at all. No direct payment to the college, no reimbursement. “This was very disappointing,” he said.

Other families are navigating how TEFA interacts with private schools’ own financial aid — some schools require families to apply for TEFA, others let them stack it with school-based assistance. The rules are still being figured out in real time.

What to watch

The equity story of TEFA is genuinely two-sided, and honest coverage has to hold both. The income data shows real reach into working-class Texas — tens of thousands of low-income families, plus a significant share of students with disabilities, now have options they didn’t have before. Houston’s numbers alone show where the demand lives.

But the already-in-private-school data, the waitlist, and the vendor confusion all point to the same unresolved question: is this program expanding opportunity, or mostly reimbursing it? Lawmakers will wrestle with that as they weigh the $2 billion ask — and the next application window will tell us who shows up next.

For Texas families watching from the sidelines: if you’re considering applying, read the approved-vendor list before you dream-spend a dime. The money is real, but so is the fine print.