FACING FACTS: CHARTER SCHOOLS IN TEXAS: AFTER THIRTY YEARS IT’S TIME FOR CHANGE
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Voucher Timeline

  • October 1, 2026: The Houston Chronicle reported that Texas public schools will lose at least $227 million this school year alone to Texas’ new voucher program. The funding loss was calculated using public information requests and data analysis from OSOD’s Texas Center for Voucher Transparency and Every Texan. Including districts with fewer than 30 voucher-funded students, the statewide estimate balloons to approximately $294 million.
  • September 9, 2026: The Legislative Budget Board held a hearing on the Comptroller’s Legislative Appropriations Request (LAR) seeking to increase funding for vouchers to potentially $4.4 billion of taxpayer dollars in the 2028-29 fiscal year. OSOD and TXCVT joined with public education partners to testify against increased funding without a comprehensive program evaluation that includes a clear picture of who is being served, and academic outcomes of its participants.
  • August 28, 2026: The Texas Education Freedom Account Facebook page posted that an additional 4,500 awards had been made to waitlisted applicants.
  • August 10, 2026: The Comptroller’s office released a new fact sheet with additional demographics about the 118,441 students awarded vouchers as of August 10, including information that was not included in the August 1 demographic report:
    • 70% of students in grades 1-12 were previously enrolled in private school or homeschool. The Comptroller chose not to include the number or percentage of students in PK/K in this graphic.
    • 67% of voucher recipients plan to enroll in private school and 33% in homeschool/other.
    • 18% of recipients are from Tier 1, 55% from Tier 2, and 27% from Tier 3.
  • August 1, 2026: New Comptroller Don Huffines was sworn in and released the first mandated demographic report on the voucher program. According to the report, over 122,000 Texans had been awarded vouchers but only about 85,000 had accepted them by the time the report was released. Further reporting by the Houston Chronicle added that 20,000 students have already opted out of the program. Key data including previous public school enrollment and homeschool enrollment were not included in the report.
  • July 31, 2026: Second deadline for families who were awarded a voucher to opt in to the program. Approximately 10,000 Tier 3 families were notified that they had received voucher funding following families opting out.
  • July 15, 2026: Deadline for families who were awarded a voucher before June 22 to opt in to the program.
  • July 1, 2026: The voucher marketplace opened for homeschool students who have opted in and students whose private schools confirmed their enrollment by June 15. OSOD released a summary of what we know (and don’t know yet) about the voucher program.
  • June 23, 2026: The Comptroller announced that 5,499 waitlisted voucher applicants were awarded a voucher as a result of families opting out of the program or selecting the homeschool option. According to the same announcement, nearly 3000 students had already opted out of the program.
  • June 10, 2026: The Comptroller announced that 102,037 applicants had been awarded a voucher. Additional awards were possible in part because around 2,000 applicants had already opted out of the program.
  • May 16, 2026: The Houston Chronicle reported on an increased number of special education evaluations requested by families seeking vouchers that strained resources at many public school districts’ special education departments.
  • May 4, 2026: The Comptroller began notifying 51,181 Tier 2 families that they had been awarded a voucher.
  • April 22, 2026: The Comptroller began notifying 42,644 Tier 1 families that they had been awarded a voucher.
  • April 2, 2026: The Houston Chronicle reported on a Florida virtual school taking advantage of a loophole in the voucher law that allows out-of-state schools to receive voucher funds if they are “acting as a vendor.”
  • March 31, 2026: The voucher application window closed, marking the end of a rocky rollout period that included ongoing legal cases, confusion over eligibility, and changing rules on documentation to qualify for special education funding. 274,183 Texans applied for the program, but less than 2% of Texas public school families ultimately applied. The Texas Tribune broke down key demographic differences between voucher applicants and public school families.
  • March 17, 2026: On the day that the voucher application was initially scheduled to close, a federal judge ordered Texas to extend the deadline to March 31st as part of the ongoing lawsuit against the voucher program by four Muslim parents and three Islamic private schools. The order also required the state to allow the schools that filed the lawsuit to register for the voucher program. Following the order, the state accepted the schools into the program.
  • March 12, 2026: The Texas Tribune reported on confusion and concerns with special education rules that did not provide enough time for many families to receive a disability evaluation and burdened public school districts with requests from private schools. Following the Tribune’s reporting, the Comptroller’s office revised its interpretation of the voucher law to allow families to receive increased voucher funding for special education in future years, even if they did not complete the disability evaluation in time for the first year.
  • March 6, 2026: The Texas Center for Voucher Transparency broke the news that nearly three in four voucher applicants were already enrolled in private or home school or not yet enrolled in school.
  • March 2, 2026: A Houston-area parent filed a lawsuit against state officials administering the voucher program, alleging religious discrimination against Islamic schools seeking to participate in the program.
  • February 4, 2026: The Comptroller opened voucher applications for Texas families.
  • February 2, 2026: Our Schools Our Democracy launched the Texas Center for Voucher Transparency to ensure that Texans have timely, credible information about how the voucher program operates, who it benefits, and how it affects public schools and communities.
  • January 24, 2026: Attorney General Ken Paxton released an opinion finding that the Comptroller can exclude certain schools from the voucher program. The Houston Chronicle reported that hundreds of private schools have not been invited to participate in the voucher program because they are accredited by Cognia, the same private school accreditor that approved the schools that the Comptroller had requested to bar.
  • January 14, 2026: The Comptroller’s office told ABC13 Houston that voucher money will not be available for families until this summer and told families to work with schools if they require tuition and fees earlier. Parents and experts interviewed for the story said that many families will not be able to afford upfront fees and predicted that, as a result, most taxpayer-funded vouchers could go to wealthy families already enrolled in private schools.
  • January 7, 2026: The Comptroller released a map of the private schools that have signed up to receive vouchers. Throughout January, the San Antonio Express News and Texas Observer have reported on early trends:
    • Few options available in rural districts.
    • Most top ranked private schools have not applied.
    • High numbers of daycare and pre-K providers.
    • Around one-third of participating private schools charge tuition that is above the voucher amount for most participants.
    • Many participating private schools discriminate by religion or sexual orientation.
  • December 12, 2025: The Comptroller sent a letter to the Attorney General asking to bar certain schools from the voucher program based on their alleged relationships to the Council of American-Islamic Relations (the largest Muslim civil rights group in the nation) and the Chinese government.
  • December 2025: Private schools and vendors began applying to participate in Texas’ voucher program. The Comptroller announced that 600 private schools submitted applications in the first 10 days.
  • November 26, 2025: The Comptroller released final rules for the voucher program, which will be called Texas Education Freedom Accounts (TEFA). Notably, the rules allow for out-of-state operators to open new campuses in Texas and receive voucher funds.
  • October 6, 2025: The Comptroller announced that Odyssey will administer Texas vouchers. Odyssey is a New York-based technology company with a concerning track record of mismanagement, delayed payments, and inflated costs while managing voucher programs in multiple states.
  • September 30, 2025: The Comptroller’s office held a public hearing on proposed voucher rules. OSOD joined other public school advocates in calling for increased transparency and accountability in this $1 billion-plus program.
  • August 22, 2025: The Comptroller’s office published proposed rules on the voucher program in the Texas Register.
  • May 3, 2025: Governor Greg Abbott signed SB 2 into law.
  • 89th Legislative Session: Vouchers were approved in a partisan vote on Senate Bill 2 in the 2025 regular session (19-12 vote in the Senate and 86-61 vote in the House). The Senate author of SB 2 was Sen. Brandon Creighton (R-Conroe) and the House author was Rep. Brad Buckley (R-Salado). The voucher program creates “education savings accounts” for eligible families that will provide about $10,000 per student in state taxpayer dollars to private schools or for private educational expenses. Legislators allocated $1 billion for the first two years of the voucher program, but that cap will expire in 2027. Legislators will decide whether to raise the biennial spending cap in future years. The fiscal note for Senate Bill 2 shows a possible escalation of costs to $4.7 billion. Other states with voucher programs have found alarming escalating costs. For example, Arizona originally estimated that its voucher program would cost just under $65 million in 2024. The true cost to taxpayers skyrocketed to $332 million that year.
  • March 11, 2025: Hundreds of people testified to the Texas House in opposition to private school vouchers. The hearing lasted 22 hours. Thousands more Texans submitted public comments online in opposition. See highlights from the opposition here, including concerns that private schools are not required to enroll special education students and are not subject to federal or state laws protecting students with disabilities. Opponents also raised the troubling record of voucher programs, with years of data from voucher programs in other states showing how vouchers have subsidized tuition for families who already attend private schools, caused massive shortfalls in state budgets, and failed to improve student outcomes.
  • Pre 2025: Texans from across the state opposed vouchers for decades before the legislation finally passed. Read a short history of voucher proposals in Texas in the Texas Tribune.