Government Money Brings Government Strings: The Case for Skipping TEFA

By My Learning Source · November 2, 2026 · Scholarships, Other

Let's start with something Texas homeschool families should never take for granted. You already have freedom. Real freedom. Not the kind someone hands you with a form attached.

Under Leeper v. Arlington ISD, upheld by the Texas Supreme Court, homeschools in Texas are treated as private schools. The requirements are simple. Run your homeschool in a bona fide manner, with a written curriculum covering reading, spelling, grammar, math and good citizenship. That's it. The Texas Education Agency does not regulate, index, monitor, approve, register or accredit homeschool programs.

Read that list again. Regulate. Monitor. Approve. Register. Texas says no to all of it. So here's the question: why would you volunteer for any of it?

What Comes Attached to the Check

Texas Education Freedom Accounts offer homeschool students up to

To get in, you have to prove eligibility: citizenship or lawful status, Texas residency, eligibility to attend a Texas public or charter school. You may land in a lottery sorted by household income tiers. Once you're in, you spend from an approved-expense list. Computer hardware and software are capped at 10% of the year's transfer. You can't pay family members. And the Comptroller must contract a private entity to audit accounts and eligibility at least annually.

None of that is sinister. It's what happens when public money is involved. Taxpayers deserve accountability. But that's exactly the point. Public money means public rules. And the rules are set by the state, and they can change.

An Abilene Family Says No Thanks

Meet Tom and Rachel in Abilene. Four kids. Eleven years of homeschooling. They've built their curriculum from used books, a church co-op, a grandmother who teaches piano and history, and a lot of hard work at the kitchen table. When TEFA launched, friends asked if they were applying.

(A composite example — names and details are illustrative, drawn from situations homeschool families commonly describe.)

They talked it over for a week. Rachel ran the numbers. Tom asked the bigger question: what does our homeschool look like if we let the state's spending list shape our choices? Grandma can't be paid from the account. The co-op isn't something they'd buy on a marketplace. The used books come from a swap table, not a vendor. And they didn't love the idea of their family's eligibility and spending being part of an annual audit.

So they passed. They kept doing exactly what they'd done for eleven years, with nobody's approval required.

“But It's Optional” — Exactly

Supporters will say TEFA is voluntary. They're right. Families could opt out. Nobody's forcing anyone in. And for some households,