The hardest sentence to hear, if you pulled your child out of a Tarrant County public school a year or two ago and are now looking at a TEFA application, is that you need to start the evaluation over. Plenty of Fort Worth families have been told exactly that by a school, a therapist or another parent. For a lot of them it is wrong, and the document that says so has been sitting on the Texas Education Agency's site since January.
The three-year look-back
TEA's letter of January 29, 2026 updated and superseded guidance it had published two weeks earlier. The new part, marked in bold in the original, covers a child who is not enrolled in public school at the time of application but who was enrolled as a child with a disability receiving services at some point within the current school year or the two before it. In that case, the letter says, the IEP in effect during the most recent school year the child was enrolled in public school "will suffice" for TEFA purposes.
There is one exception, and it matters: the prior IEP does not carry over if an admission, review and dismissal committee exited the child from special education before the withdrawal. If your last ARD meeting ended with the child being dismissed from services, you are back to needing a current evaluation.
The letter also puts the next step on the district rather than on you. Where the three-year look-back applies, the district "must upload the child's most recent IEP in the APEX-ESA system," which is how TEA passes the information to the Comptroller's office. And it preserves your option to go the longer route anyway: parents "still have the right to request a current IEP."
Why that is worth money in Tarrant County
The special-education amount is not a flat bonus. It is built from what your district would have received from the state to serve your child, which is why two families on the same street can see different numbers. Using the Comptroller's 2026-27 special education funding table and the $10,474 base award, a Fort Worth ISD student in the mainstream instructional arrangement comes to about $16,794. Keller ISD works out near $17,114, Northwest and Mansfield near $17,068, Birdville near $17,012, Arlington near $16,805 and Crowley near $16,834.
The spread widens at the higher-cost arrangements. A residential or more intensive placement code in Fort Worth ISD lands near $25,588, while the same code in Kennedale ISD comes to roughly $28,036 and in Decatur ISD about $27,727. Speech as a related service adds its own increment on top. Whatever the code, the statute caps the total at $30,000 per child including the base amount, and a homeschooled child with a disability is still limited to $2,000 for the year. Our table of IEP amounts by district has the figures for every district in the five counties this site covers, and the rules behind the add-on explain how the instructional arrangement code drives the number.
For a family deciding whether an evaluation is worth the trouble, the gap between the base award and the disability award in this metro is usually between six and eighteen thousand dollars a year. Statewide, the Comptroller's first annual report to the Legislature found that nearly one in four TEFA participants has a documented disability.
If you do need an evaluation
TEA's earlier letter, dated November 20, 2025, is still the authority on how that works, and it opens by stating something many private school parents never knew: "IDEA has always required school districts to perform evaluations of students suspected of having a disability who are not enrolled in public school."
The timelines are unchanged. A district has 15 school days to respond to a written request made to the special education director or an administrative employee. Once you consent, the district has 45 school days to complete the evaluation and produce the report. The ARD committee then has 30 calendar days to meet, decide eligibility and, if the child is eligible, complete the IEP.
Two districts owe you that duty, not one. Child Find obligations fall on the district where you live and on the district where the eligible private school sits. For a family living in Burleson whose child attends school in central Fort Worth, that is a real choice, and you can ask either. The letter is equally clear that "no other district is subject to Child Find obligations for non-public students," so there is no shopping beyond those two.
Districts also have a financial reason not to drag their feet. Under House Bill 2 and Texas Education Code section 48.159, a district receives $1,000 for each initial evaluation, including evaluations done for parents seeking an education freedom account.
What an EFA IEP is, and is not
If your child has never had an IEP, what the ARD committee writes may be a shorter document than you expect. TEA calls it an EFA IEP and says plainly that it "will contain some, but not all, parts of an IEP that would be governed by IDEA and state law for the purpose of providing a free appropriate public education." It covers the schedule and delivery of services, accommodations and modifications, supplementary aids and services, and the instructional arrangement code or tiered funding level. It does not require present levels of performance, annual goals or assessment statements.
That trade is worth understanding before you sign. The EFA IEP exists to establish eligibility and a funding level. It is not a services plan that a private school is bound to deliver, and private schools in Tarrant County vary enormously in what they can actually provide. Our list of special-needs schools in Fort Worth is the place to compare that before the money question.
One more thing families get backwards: a physician's certification. A proposed Comptroller rule would let a doctor's letter or proof of supplemental income establish priority in the enrollment lottery. It does not establish the funding amount. For that, the November letter is explicit that the award is based on the child being evaluated by a school district and having a current IEP or a new EFA IEP.
Where to start
Find your last ARD paperwork first. If the most recent IEP is from the current school year or either of the two before it, and no ARD exited your child from services, bring that document to the conversation rather than a request to begin again. If it is older than three years, write to the special education director this week and start the 15-day clock, because the 45-day evaluation window plus a 30-day ARD meeting is most of a semester.
Sources
- Texas Education Agency - Updated Guidance: Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) and Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), Jan. 29, 2026 (three-year look-back, ARD exit exception, APEX-ESA upload)
- Texas Education Agency - Senate Bill 2: Education Savings Accounts and Children with Disabilities, Nov. 20, 2025 (evaluation timelines, Child Find, EFA IEP contents, $1,000 evaluation funding, $30,000 cap)
- Texas Comptroller - Comptroller Don Huffines Reports Record-Setting Demand for Education Freedom in Texas (Aug. 3, 2026: nearly one in four participants has a documented disability)
- Texas Education Freedom Accounts - Families (base award, $30,000 cap, $2,000 homeschool limit)