Texas is poised to invest $1 billion to expand access to nonpublic education options, moving the state closer to joining more than a dozen others with universal school choice.
The bill now awaits the signature of Gov. Greg Abbott, who made school choice a top legislative priority.
“When it reaches my desk, I will swiftly sign this bill into law,” the Republican governor said this month.
Once enacted, the bill will launch a statewide education savings account (ESA) program beginning with the 2026–2027 school year. The initiative will allocate $1 billion in public funds over two years to help eligible families cover a wide range of education-related expenses, including tuition at a nonpublic school, tutoring, special education services, transportation, and extracurricular activities.
All six million K–12 students of the Lone Star State will be eligible to apply. The program would provide approximately $10,000 per year for students attending private schools, up to $30,000 for students with disabilities, and as much as $2,000 for home-schoolers.
If applications exceed available funding, the program will prioritize children with disabilities and students from low- and middle-income families who were previously enrolled in public schools, according to the bill.
The program would mark a significant shift in the state’s approach to K–12 funding, which has historically assigned education dollars to school districts rather than directly to students.
It also represents a major win for Abbott and advocates of education freedom—the idea that parents should be able to choose the educational path they believe best suits their children. Their efforts to advance that vision through legislation had been stalled for years, largely due to resistance in the Texas House, where rural lawmakers have long expressed concern that school choice programs would siphon money away from local public schools.
In 2017, a similar school choice bill cleared the Senate and failed in the House. Additional proposals were defeated again in 2021 and 2023, prompting Abbott to make school choice a defining issue in the 2024 Republican primary and aggressively campaign against rural Republicans who blocked the bills.
In alignment with Abbott’s pledge to strengthen both public and private education options, the Texas House also gave preliminary approval Thursday to House Bill 2, a sweeping $7.7 billion school funding package that would give local districts more money per student and raise salaries for teachers.
Texas’s move comes as school choice programs continue to gain traction nationwide.
According to EdChoice, a nonprofit that advocates for education alternatives, 17 states currently operate ESA programs. Participation has grown rapidly, with nearly 489,000 students enrolled in 2025 compared with roughly 40,000 in 2022.
The school choice movement has also received strong backing from President Donald Trump in both of his terms.
