New Texas School Choice Dashboard Shows Demand Ahead of Session

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Texas Comptroller Don Huffines (R) has launched a new Texas Education Freedom Accounts (TEFA) transparency dashboard, giving taxpayers a clearer look at participation in the state’s school choice program. The initial data shows substantial demand, with more than 111,000 funded participants and nearly 95,400 applicants still on the waiting list.

For lawmakers preparing for the 90th Legislature, those figures bring an unresolved question into focus: Will Texas build on its initial school choice program to make educational freedom broadly available, or continue distributing access through limited funding and government-established priorities?

The dashboard is a useful transparency measure. Its greater value will depend on whether lawmakers use the information to improve access, scrutinize spending, and address the structural limits of the program.

What the TEFA Dashboard Shows

According to the Texas Education Freedom Accounts dashboard, the program had received 274,144 applications as of October 29, 2026. Of those, 248,712 applicants were identified as eligible.

The dashboard reports 111,295 funded participants, 95,389 applicants on the waiting list, and 33,878 applicants who opted out. The waitlist has shrunk considerably since May, when roughly 153,000 applicants remained unfunded after the second round of awards. Since then, the Comptroller’s office has made additional awards to waitlisted students, and many applicants have opted out. Even so, demand continues to exceed available funding.

These numbers demonstrate considerable interest in educational alternatives. They also illustrate a meaningful distinction between eligibility and access. Being eligible does not guarantee that a family will receive an account.

The figures represent an evolving snapshot. The Comptroller’s office notes that accounts are still being awarded and funded during the program’s first year. The dashboard should therefore be read as a description of current participation, rather than a final accounting.

Some figures also need clarification. Funded participants, waitlisted applicants, and opt-outs total 240,562, which is 8,150 fewer than the reported eligible-applicant count. The initial display does not explain that difference. Additional information about processing stages, reporting dates, or other statuses would help taxpayers reconcile the totals.

Most Funded Participants Are Low-Income

The dashboard identifies 66,863 funded participants as low-income, representing 60.08 percent of funded participation. Another 44,412 participants fall into its middle-income category, while 20 fall into its high-income category. That last figure stands out. Of the 67,002 eligible applicants in the high-income category, only 20 received funding, reflecting how the program’s priority tiers have rationed access.

Those figures show that the program’s initial funded population is concentrated in the dashboard’s low-income category. They do not support describing the current distribution as primarily benefiting high-income households.

Income categories are administrative classifications, and their definitions matter. The dashboard’s categories track the priority groups established in Senate Bill 2 (SB 2). Low-income households are those at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty guidelines, roughly $62,400 for a family of four. Middle-income households fall above 200 percent and below 500 percent, and high-income households are at or above 500 percent. Children with disabilities in households at or below 500 percent receive first priority, so they appear in both the low- and middle-income categories. Those definitions also explain why the low-income share is lower than the roughly 77 percent TPR reported in June. As awards expanded to Tier 3 applicants, more middle-income families received accounts.

These categories do not independently establish whether an account covers a family’s tuition costs, whether an appropriate provider is nearby, or whether transportation and other expenses prevent participation.

For lawmakers, the next question should be whether families can actually use the options available to them. Account awards are an important measure of access, but they cannot tell the entire story.

Students With Disabilities Make Up 17 Percent

The dashboard reports that 17 percent of funded participants have a qualifying disability.

That figure provides a useful starting point for evaluating whether the program is reaching families seeking specialized educational services. Participation alone, however, does not establish whether those families can find suitable providers or obtain the services their children need.

As lawmakers review implementation, they should examine whether documentation requirements, application procedures, and provider availability create unnecessary barriers. Oversight should help ensure that claimed expenses are eligible while preserving parents’ ability to choose an educational setting suited to their child.

Prior Public School Attendance Requires Context

The dashboard reports that 17.38 percent of funded participants were students in grades 2 through 12 who attended a public school in the previous year, which the Comptroller’s office defines as the 2024-25 school year. Another 54.91 percent were students in those grades who did not. The remaining 27.71 percent were students in pre-K, kindergarten, or first grade, whom the dashboard reports as a separate category.

That figure is likely to draw attention during the 90th Legislature. Critics of school choice have argued that education freedom accounts mainly subsidize families whose children were already outside the public school system. The data does show that most funded participants in grades 2 through 12 were not in public schools in 2024-25. But the headline figure deserves careful reading.

The youngest students account for more than a quarter of funded participants, and few of them would have had a meaningful prior year of public schooling to report. Counting only students in grades 2 through 12, about 24 percent of funded participants had attended a public school the previous year.

That share is lower than earlier releases suggested. After the second round of awards, about 32 percent of Tier 2 recipients had previously attended public school. In June, TPR reported that roughly 43 percent of awarded students came from public schools. Some of the difference may reflect how each release measured attendance. The dashboard also does not report prior public school attendance by priority tier, even though Tier 3 now accounts for 30.62 percent of funded participants. A tier-level breakdown with consistent definitions would help lawmakers understand how the program’s composition has changed as awards expanded.

Several factors shape these numbers. A first-year program will naturally draw heavily from families already paying for private school or homeschooling, because they already know which providers exist and how to use them. Families weighing a first move out of a public school face more uncertainty. They must find out whether a nearby school has space, whether an account will cover tuition, and whether they will receive an award at all. A capped program that awards accounts by lottery cannot promise those families anything, which makes it poorly suited to encouraging that kind of move.

Families already outside the public system are taxpayers as well. They pay the same property, sales, and other taxes that fund public education, and many have done so for years while also paying for the education their children actually receive. Some critics nonetheless describe accounts for those families as a handout. That framing assumes education funding belongs to an institution, and that a family forfeits its share by choosing a different school. A program built on the principle that funding follows the student cannot reasonably exclude students based on where they enrolled before the program existed. Treating those families the same as everyone else is not a subsidy. It is consistency.

There is a legitimate fiscal question beneath the criticism. When a student who already attended private school receives an account, the state does not save the cost of a public school seat. SB 2 itself anticipates that outcome, describing the program as a state benefit “in addition to a free public education.” The current structure compounds the problem, because hold-harmless provisions and broader increases in public education funding insulate districts even when students do leave. SB 2 requires the Comptroller’s annual report to estimate the cost savings the program produces, and lawmakers should examine that figure closely, because it will show whether accounts are replacing existing spending or adding to it. The answer is not to bar families who already chose private education. It is to stop funding two systems at once. If funding followed students rather than institutions, an account would replace existing spending instead of adding to it.

The figure should also not be confused with public school enrollment trends. Texas Education Agency (TEA) data showed that public school enrollment fell by more than 76,000 students during the 2025-26 school year, before TEFA participants began using their accounts. Because the dashboard measures attendance in 2024-25, it does not capture families who left public schools during that later decline. As TPR noted in June, the enrollment decline and the demand for school choice appear to be parallel signals of changing family preferences, not cause and effect.

For lawmakers, the more useful question is not how many participants left a public school before applying, but whether the program’s design allows more families to make that choice over time. As long as access is capped and distributed by lottery, prior public school attendance will reflect the program’s limits as much as families’ preferences.

What the Dashboard Means for the 90th Legislature

The dashboard arrives as lawmakers prepare to make the program’s first real funding decision. Under SB 2, spending for the current biennium may not exceed $1 billion, a limit that expires September 1, 2027. After that, the size of the program depends entirely on what the Legislature appropriates.

SB 2 also ties the waiting list directly to that decision. The Comptroller’s appropriations request must state the amount needed to fund every participating child, every eligible sibling entering the program for the first time, and every child on the waiting list as of January 1 preceding the biennium. The waitlist is therefore more than a measure of demand. It is part of the budget request lawmakers will receive.

That gives the 90th Legislature a clear choice. Lawmakers can appropriate enough to serve the families already waiting, or they can appropriate less and continue rationing access through priority tiers and lotteries. Either way, the outcome will reflect a legislative decision, not a statutory cap.

Funding the waitlist alone, however, would not resolve the program’s central problem. As long as the state continues expanding funding for government schools while also funding education freedom accounts, Texas will operate two increasingly expensive systems rather than one in which funding follows students. The Texas Liberty Compact calls for truly universal school choice: eligibility without arbitrary caps, funding that follows students directly, and reform that does not expand baseline spending.

Conclusion

The new dashboard confirms what earlier releases suggested. Demand for school choice in Texas is broad. Most funded participants fall in the program’s low-income category, higher-income families have been almost entirely shut out, and access remains limited by design rather than by interest.

The data also raises questions the dashboard cannot yet answer, including how its totals reconcile, how participation varies by priority tier, and whether families who receive accounts can find providers that meet their needs. Continued transparency will help lawmakers and taxpayers answer them.

The question for the 90th Legislature is no longer whether Texas families want educational freedom. It is whether lawmakers will build a system that offers it to every family, rather than rationing it among those fortunate enough to win an account.

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