Texas TEFA,
built into the dashboard.

What TEFA is and why it is the biggest US ESA wave

The Texas Education Freedom Account (TEFA) is the state's universal Education Savings Account program, signed into law in 2025 and launched for the 2026-27 academic year. It funds private school tuition, homeschool curriculum and tutoring, therapies, testing fees, and other approved expenses through a state-managed account that a participating family draws against.

Year 1 received 274,183 applications during the February 4 to March 31, 2026 window. By June 2026 more than 102,000 students had been awarded, with roughly 145,000 still waitlisted across the program's priority tiers because demand far exceeded the first-year appropriation (awards release in rolling waitlist batches, so these counts climb through the year). The Texas Comptroller selected Odyssey as the Certified Educational Assistance Organization (CEAO) that administers the platform, vendor approvals, and reimbursement disbursements. Private-school funding releases in three tranches: 25% on July 1, 2026, 25% on October 1, 2026, and the remaining 50% on February 1, 2027. Homeschool students receive their full $2,000 allocation upfront on July 1, 2026.

Funding is now moving: the Comptroller reported that nearly 73,000 accounts received their initial funding on July 1, 2026. The school-side step that releases it is enrollment confirmation. Families awarded before June 22 had until July 15 to select a participating school, and the selected school had until July 31 to confirm that student's enrollment in the TEFA portal. Because waitlisted families are still being awarded in batches, the rule that keeps mattering is the rolling one: a family awarded later has four weeks from the date of their award to complete confirmation, which means the school has to act inside that window every time a new award lands.

TEFA's $10,474 per K-12 private school student award is currently the largest per-student award of any US ESA program. For most microschool operators in Texas, this single program changes the financial picture: tuition that would have been hard to collect from families arrives in three installments through a single state platform.

Who can be a TEFA-approved vendor

Texas microschools, learning pods, and homeschool co-ops apply through Odyssey's provider portal, not the Comptroller directly. To take TEFA tuition as a participating private school, a school must be accredited (TEPSAC or TEA), have at least two years in operation, and have a physical Texas location. The document set follows the same pattern as other state platforms: entity formation documents, a W-9 that matches the legal name and EIN exactly, proof of accreditation, a tuition and fee schedule, and the bank account that will receive payouts.

Independent operators do not need to register a separate ESA-specific entity. A Texas LLC or sole proprietorship that already operates the school can use its existing TIN to register with Odyssey.

Reporting cadence and operator obligations

TEFA disburses on a three-tranche schedule (25% / 25% / 50%), and the money follows confirmed enrollment: the school confirms the student's enrollment in Odyssey, and each later installment depends on that student remaining enrolled. TEFA does not impose a quarterly attendance or progress report: the school-side obligation is keeping enrollment confirmed and current, and Odyssey may request expense-category documentation during periodic spot reviews.

TEFA's final rules condition some categories rather than banning them: tutoring is eligible when the tutor holds an active teaching certificate, and therapies must be delivered by licensed professionals. Technology purchases are capped at 10% of each account's allocation. There are no reimbursements: every transaction routes through Odyssey-approved payment channels.

For students in grades 3-12, the parent is responsible for submitting nationally norm-referenced test results each year. On the school side, dated records of every student's enrollment, attendance, tuition charged, TEFA portion received, and out-of-pocket portion paid are what let you answer any review from the file instead of from memory.

What CohortLedger does for Texas operators

CohortLedger is built around how TEFA money actually reaches a school. Each quarter's invoice splits the TEFA-covered tuition from what the family owes, and the TEFA portion is capped at your tuition: a $10,474 award against $9,600 of annual tuition invoices $2,400 a quarter, and the rest stays in the family's account. The dashboard tracks expected against received for every family, and the bank reconciliation page flags any deposit that does not match its invoice.

The audit packet feature generates a state-reviewer-ready quarterly summary in one click: per-student tuition, attendance counts, compliance log, and certification timestamp. The vendor wizard pre-loads Odyssey's TEFA registration steps so new operators do not have to assemble the documentation list themselves. The compliance calendar sends reminders ahead of each TEFA task, starting with the enrollment confirmation the next installment depends on.