Thousands of families will go into the first day of school this fall using Texas Education Freedom Accounts, also known as education savings accounts, a new state-funded program that pays for private school tuition, tutoring, therapy and other school-related costs.
In the San Antonio region, 249 private schools have signed up to receive these funds and more than 23,000 families have applied for an award. About 260,000 families have applied statewide, with most indicating that their children already attend private school. It’s unclear how many families will receive the benefit.
Tuesday was the last day to apply for an ESA. Some thought that last-minute court decisions would extend the deadline, but this did not happen.
While ESAs mark new territory for Texas, other states implemented their own voucher-like programs decades before. Texas does mark one of the biggest program kickoffs with $1 billion state dollars and universal eligibility.
On Tuesday, national and local education experts discussed ESAs during the San Antonio Report’s annual Education Forum. These experts talked about the history of school vouchers internationally, potential challenges and benefits, how Texas compares to other states with vouchers and what this new venture could look like for students in San Antonio.
“Texas matters in ways you may not believe or think,” said Derrell Bradford, president of 50CAN, a national group advocating education reform efforts. “Everyone is watching.”
Here are the top takeaways from panelists who spoke at the March 31 Ed Forum at Texas Public Radio.
1. Special education students get funding priority, but there’s a resource gap in San Antonio
Under the TEFA program, families that make less than 500% of the federal poverty guidelines and have children with disabilities receive funding priority. If these families provide documentation of special education needs, they could also receive up to $30,000 compared to general education students who’d get closer to $10,000 or homeschoolers, who are capped at $2,000.
Despite getting priority, however, San Antonio may not have enough private sector resources or schools that can accommodate a growing number of special needs students.
And getting the right documents for the extra funding, known as an Individual Education Plan or 504, can be a hassle for families navigating the special ed system for the first time. Right now, school districts carry the burden of testing students, whether they’re enrolled with them or not, for IEPs and 504 plans — a process that can take more than 40 days.
“That’s a real tension point,” said Dalia Contreras, chief executive officer of San Antonio-based City Education Partners, a group that advocates for education reform.
It’s also why the state extended its application deadline from March 17 to March 31.
San Antonio’s private schools largely don’t have the resources to provide special education services, said Marisa Perez-Diaz, a member on the State Board of Education representing Bexar County. In the past, private schools who take on students with disabilities have contracted with public school districts — which are federally required to provide special ed.
“Either these private schools that are now receiving voucher dollars will use those dollars to then bring on resources to their campuses… or the institutions who choose to still not offer those services will then not be able to service students with special needs,” Perez-Diaz said.
Jason King, a professor from St. Mary’s University who studies Catholic education, said private Catholic schools are being “cautious” about accepting students with disabilities, but are thinking long term about hiring additional staff to meet demand.
2. ESAs can breed innovations between private and public education systems in San Antonio
While the TEFA program faces criticism from public school advocates worried that the program will draw students and funding away from public schools, Contreras said ESAs can be a catalyst for new kinds of school models and partnerships.
Under SB 2, public school districts and charter networks can partner with private providers to offer individual courses and services, like special education or dual credit and AP courses.
TEFAs could also be a game changer for flexible school models in San Antonio, such as hybrid and online education or the intersection of homeschooling and micro schooling, according to several panelists. They could also be a launching pad for school districts interested in getting into the education vendor market.
Under state rules, education vendor services can range from tutoring, to therapy, transportation, teaching services and individual courses.
“San Antonio could get really creative about what those additional options are for school settings for children,” Contreras said.
3. Families may not have had enough information or resources to understand the ESA application process
It’s likely that no family who makes above the 500% federal poverty guidelines will get awarded a TEFA, the last priority group, and the state is expected to reject about half of applications.
The state is likely to fund all students in the first priority groups, students with disabilities under the 500% income threshold, and most students in the second group, children in families who make less than 200% of the federal poverty guideline. The rest of students will probably be put on waitlist and awarded TEFAs on a lottery system.
Still, questions remain of whether the state did enough to reach the neediest families and remove barriers to the application process.
Perez-Diaz said families were struggling to get all their documents in order, including identification, IEPs and 504 plans, tax forms and other materials. She said that more could’ve been done to reach families and help them navigate this new world.
But Daniel Warner, the state director for Odyssey, the technology platform running the TEFA program, said Texas spent a lot of time on marketing. Starting in January, his team held about 30 events across Texas, including San Antonio, to meet with families.
“We interacted with more than 4,000 families doing this across the state, which is unbelievable,” Warner said.
4. Right now, it’s all a “guessing game”
While perspectives on the TEFA program ranged on the Ed Forum stage, everyone agreed that no one really knows what implementation will look like in San Antonio.
Perez-Diaz said she didn’t know what role the state education board would have in the accreditation process of private schools and vendors, adding that the board has been “kept at arm’s length.”
In San Antonio, several Catholic private schools have closed in recent years due to financial struggles that result from trying to keep tuition affordable for underserved communities. But King says ESAs could provide the Archdiocese of San Antonio an opportunity to pad enrollment and increase access to families who want a faith-based education.
For Warner, the efficacy of the TEFA program will depend on whether every student who’s awarded a voucher actually finds a spot to enroll in. “That will be really where they think the rubber meets the road.”
Contreras said the rollout of TEFAs won’t be clear until the state releases final numbers on what kinds of students applied, how they’re using the funds and whether they unenrolled from public schools to accept an award.
“Unfortunately, we’re in a little bit of a guessing game to see how that’s going to play out,” she said.
5. School vouchers are not new — they’ve been around for a while
Programs using public funds for private school tuition can be traced back to the Civil War era in the state of Vermont, said Patrick Wolf, an education policy professor from University of Arkansas.
Wolf studies school choice programs across the country. He’s visited Texas several times to testify in support of education savings accounts before the state passed them in Senate Bill 2 during the 89th Legislative Session last year.
Gaining prominence in the 1990s, now more than half of states in the U.S. have some form of school voucher or ESA program.
It wasn’t until 2011, however, that the ESA model was created in Arizona, who took their straightforward school voucher program and opened it up to education vendors and services as well as private schools.
While there have been pushes at the federal level to promote school choice, there is no national voucher program, unlike other countries.
Having been around for over 100 years, voucher-like programs are used widely across the globe. In fact, around 81% of countries in the world have some version of it, said Ashley Berner, policy director for the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy.
“The United States is the outlier,” Berner said.
6. Education savings accounts can improve outcomes, but the quality of education also matters
One of the biggest challenges families face can be navigating their school options, said Berner, especially when it comes to distinguishing between quality and not-so-good programs. In the U.S. only about one-third of fourth graders can read on grade level, according to the Nation’s Report Card.
Bradford said it’s also important to keep the motivations from all the players involved in ESAs. In his experience across the country, families prioritize flexibility, schools and vendors want to be competitive and lawmakers have political motivations.
”They could be invested in the similar policy, but they can want the similar policy for different things,” he said.
The solution, Berner said, is increasing access to academically rigorous curriculum typically associated with private schools models.
“Choice is necessary but insufficient. We have to care about quality,” she said.
Increasing choice could also lead to better outcomes in traditional public school districts, said Wolf, since it’ll breed more competition and innovation.
“This dynamism in the K-12 education sector will yield positive results for students,” he said. “The single most common finding in the research literature on school choice is that when district run public schools are exposed to competition from new or expanding choice programs, the educational outcomes for their students improve.”
But families will likely be the first line of accountability, said Wolf, since they will be the ones enrolling in schools of their choice and unenrolling if it doesn’t work out for their kids.
7. Experts warn against making quick assumptions of fraud or misuse of funds
While headlines from states with older voucher programs like Utah and Arizona tend to focus on fraud allegations, Wolf said numbers can often be misrepresented.
In Arizona, for example, some reports say that about $10 million of the state’s $1 billion ESA program were misspent on things like gift cards, hotel stay and other costs in 2024. But Wolf said that generally, the amount of funds used on “questionable” services in Arizona is closer to 2%.
“When you drill down on those, about 0.3% of the expenditures in these programs are would qualify as outright fraud,” Wolf explained, adding that a small level of fraud is to be expected with most government-funded programs.
“All indications are that these programs are being implemented with a minimum amount of inappropriate purchases and fraud,” he said.
