Homeschooled Kids Could Get a Lot of Voucher Funding. Here’s Why.

One of the most bruising and polarizing fights in the Texas Legislature this session was waged over Senate Bill 2, which directed $1 billion to be set aside to give families more flexibility to pursue education outside of public schools — “school choice,” in the parlance of its Republican supporters. 

Both parties this session framed the debate around its use of public tax dollars to subsidize private school tuition. But as signed into law, each of the state’s at least half a million homeschooled students also will be eligible for up to $2,000 in state money, which can be used for books, tutoring and therapy.

That has many experts predicting that homeschooling vouchers will account for a majority of the money set aside for the 2026-27 school year.

“People have walked into this with the idea that this is a program for accredited private school students, and a few homeschoolers might also participate,” Jeremy Newman, vice president of policy and litigation at the Texas Homeschool Coalition, told the Houston Chronicle. “There’s a decent probability it will be the opposite.”

Private school hurdles

SB 2’s private school vouchers by themselves will be larger than its homeschooling vouchers. The final version tied the size of the private vouchers to the amount Texas spends on each public student, which for the 2026-27 school year would amount to about $9,000 per student that could go toward private school tuition, books and other prescribed uses.

Any student who is eligible to be enrolled in public school in Texas — regardless of whether she actually is — can apply for the private school vouchers. But getting admitted to a private school is another matter.

SB 2 does not require private schools to modify their admission policies, which can include standardized tests and grade requirements, in order to receive state money. That could prevent poor families from taking advantage of the voucher money, even if they are interested in private schooling.

Conversely, students whose families already can afford to enroll them in private schools still can take advantage of the subsidies, a criticism that many Democrats leveled against the Republican proposal.

That almost certainly will account for a significant share of the private school voucher money. Nearly half of the subsidies that Arizona created for private schooling went to families already enrolled, a ProPublica investigation found.

And schools in Texas don’t have the space yet to take in the more than 100,000 new students that the private vouchers could support. This year, there were openings for perhaps a tenth as many new students, representatives from private schools testified to lawmakers this session.

Private schools also are limited by geography in a way that homeschooling isn’t. Rural areas tend to have few, if any, in-person private schooling options, which fueled opposition to a voucher plan last session from rural Republicans.

Homeschool advantages

Most of those caveats don’t exist for families that homeschool their children.

For one, there are nearly twice as many homeschooled students in Texas than students enrolled in private schools. The Legislative Budget Board this session estimated that about 270,000 people would apply for the program, which would account for a majority of its budget.

It’s difficult to get precise figures for the number of homeschooling families in Texas because it has some of the loosest reporting and oversight laws for homeschooling in the country, according to the Chronicle.

If demand for the program outstrips its funding, the state would use a tiered system to choose which families get priority in the program, reserving the first batch of spots for students with disabilities and poorer families. (If not, the state would not restrict the use of those vouchers to any income levels, a point that Democrats again repeatedly criticized during the session.) 

Those demographics tend to align with Texas’s homeschooled population. A 2019 Texas Homeschool Coalition survey found that 24% of 1,200 homeschooling families had a child with a disability. And though homeschooling household incomes vary, many are single-income households because one parent is responsible for teaching the kids.

That could give homeschoolers more slots for public money if the vouchers are competitive.

Still, it remains to be seen how many homeschooled families actually take advantage of the program. 

A survey of homeschooling families conducted by Hearst Media found that many are suspicious of taking any government funding, believing that it will lead to more oversight or intervention — though at least one study of existing homeschool subsidy programs in the U.S. found that they actually might be correlated with looser regulations on homeschools.

Many homeschooling families also supplement in-home education with extracurriculars and “co-op” programs that pool other homeschooled kids together. Those extra costs, which families told the Chronicle can run between $5,000 and $10,000 per year, are not approved uses of the state money.

Other households may choose to enroll their children in private schools because SB 2 provides extra private school vouchers for students with disabilities, but homeschooled families are not likewise eligible for more money.