Tax Credit Programs for Charlotte Mason Schools

The short version

• There are five basic kinds of programs: education savings accounts (ESAs), vouchers, tax-credit scholarships, tax-credit ESAs, and individual tax credits or deductions. They are not interchangeable. Which one your state has changes whether homeschooling qualifies.
• A new federal tax credit (up to $1,700 a year, dollar-for-dollar) takes effect January 1, 2027, and only in states that formally opt in.
• Coverage is wildly uneven. Some states have five or six overlapping programs. Others, including some of the biggest by population, currently have none.
• Programs get created, expanded, capped, and occasionally struck down by courts, sometimes within the same year. Always check the current status before counting on funding.

The five kinds of programs

Let's break it down. Knowing which type you are looking at tells you most of what you need before you read the fine print, especially whether it can help a homeschooling family, not just a private-school one.

Education Savings Accounts (ESAs). The state deposits public funds into a parent-controlled account, usually loaded onto a card or an online marketplace platform. Families can typically spend it on private school tuition, curriculum, tutoring, therapy, and other approved educational expenses. This is the category most consistently open to homeschoolers as well as private-school families. In several states, homeschooled students make up the majority of ESA participants.

Vouchers. State funding follows the student directly to a participating private school as tuition. This is the oldest form of school choice, dating to the 1800s in a couple of New England town-tuitioning programs, and the most restrictive. You generally have to be enrolled in a participating private school. Homeschooling does not qualify.

Tax-credit scholarships. Individuals or businesses donate to a nonprofit scholarship granting organization, and get a state tax credit for the donation. The nonprofit then awards scholarships to families for private school tuition. You apply to the nonprofit, not the state directly. Like vouchers, these are usually tuition-only, not homeschool-eligible.

Tax-credit ESAs. A hybrid of the two above. Donations fund a nonprofit, but instead of a straight tuition check, the nonprofit manages parent-directed accounts that work like an ESA: broader allowed uses, sometimes including homeschool expenses.

Individual tax credits and deductions. You pay the expense yourself (tuition, homeschool curriculum, tutoring) and claim it on your own state tax return. Some are refundable: you get money back even if you owe little or no state tax. Most are not, meaning they only offset taxes you would otherwise owe. This category varies the most. Some states write homeschool expenses in (Ohio, Indiana, Oklahoma). Others do not mention it at all.

Oklahoma's Parental Choice Tax Credit is a refundable tax credit that behaves a bit like a hybrid. The private-school portion is a direct payment to the school, processed through the state tax system rather than showing up as a line on your return. A separate, smaller credit for homeschool families is claimed directly on the return.

What is coming in 2027: a federal tax credit

For the first time, Congress has created a federal-level version of this. Signed into law in July 2025 as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the new Federal Tax Credit for Scholarships (Section 25F of the federal tax code) takes effect January 1, 2027.

Here is how it is designed to work. Any taxpayer with federal tax liability can donate to an IRS-approved scholarship organization and claim a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit of up to $1,700, but only for donations made in a covered state. That means a state whose governor or designated authority has formally opted in and submitted a list of qualifying scholarship organizations to the IRS. States can begin filing that election starting in 2026. The credit is permanent and uncapped at the federal level (no nationwide dollar ceiling). Final IRS implementation rules are still being written as of 2026.

Put simply, whether this helps your family in 2027 depends entirely on whether your state opts in. Worth watching if your state currently has no program of its own.

• Live tracker of which states have opted in: whitehouse.gov/schoolchoice
• Full explainer: EdChoice's Federal Tax Credit for Scholarships overview

What to check before you apply

Next steps. Every program below has its own quirks, but a few questions are worth asking of any of them before you build a school budget around one:

• Is it eligibility, or is it funding? A program can be open to everyone on paper and still have a capped budget, a lottery, or a waitlist once demand exceeds available dollars. Being eligible and being funded are not the same thing.
• Is there an income cap, for eligibility, or just for priority? Some programs (Oklahoma, North Carolina) let everyone apply but process lower-income families first. Others cut higher earners off entirely.
• What is the application window, and is it different from the renewal window? Several of the biggest programs only accept new applications for a few weeks a year (Utah's is a single month). Returning families often have a separate, earlier renewal deadline that is easy to miss.
• Does it require enrollment in a specific participating or direct-payment school? Not every private school in a state accepts every program. Check the school's own list before assuming a scholarship will transfer.
• Is the money a direct payment to the school, a reimbursement, or a spending account? This affects your cash flow. Some programs pay the school directly. Some require you to pay first and get reimbursed. ESA-style programs load funds onto an account or card you spend from directly.
• Does it actually cover homeschooling, or only private school? Do not assume. Check the specific program, using the type above as your first clue.
• Is the program currently under legal challenge? A handful of programs nationally have faced constitutional lawsuits in their home states. A program under appeal can still be operating and worth applying to. It is still worth knowing the ground is not fully settled.

Find your state

Programs are grouped by state, alphabetically. Each entry lists the program name, its type, and a link: either the state's own official page, or (where a direct government link was not confirmed at time of writing) the program's profile on EdChoice, a nonpartisan nonprofit that maintains the most complete national tracker of these programs and links onward to official sources. Last checked 2026-09-05.

States with no program (as of this writing)

A number of states currently have no private-school-choice program of any kind, including several with large populations: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, and Washington, along with the territories of American Samoa, Guam, and U.S. Virgin Islands. Kentucky and Nebraska each passed a program that no longer functions. See their entries above for what happened.

This list is genuinely likely to shift. School choice has been one of the most active areas of state legislation for several years running, and a program can appear (or a court can remove one) within a single session. If you live in one of these states, the federal credit arriving in 2027 is worth watching, since it does not require your state to build its own program, only to opt in to the federal one.

Keeping this page accurate

We built this page from primary sources: official state program pages where we could confirm them directly, and EdChoice's national tracker, a nonpartisan nonprofit that maintains the most complete state-by-state directory of these programs, everywhere else. Every link was checked live at the time of writing (2026-09-05). See also our methodology.

This is genuinely one of the fastest-changing corners of state policy. Legislatures create, expand, and cap programs every session, and a handful have ended up in court. Utah's ESA program is currently on appeal to the state Supreme Court, as noted above. We will revisit this page periodically. The single most reliable ongoing source is EdChoice's own live directory, which we would encourage bookmarking directly.

• Find Your State's Current Programs: EdChoice, September 2026.
• School Choice Fast Facts: EdChoice, September 2026.
• Federal Tax Credit for Scholarships: EdChoice, September 2026.
• School Choice: State Opt-In Tracker: The White House, September 2026.
• Empowerment Scholarship Accounts: Arizona Department of Education, September 2026.
• Step Up For Students: Step Up For Students, September 2026.
• Indiana Choice Scholarship Program: Indiana Department of Education, September 2026.
• Opportunity Scholarship: North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority, September 2026.
• Parental Choice Tax Credit: Oklahoma Tax Commission, September 2026.
• Utah Fits All Scholarship: Utah State Board of Education, September 2026.
• Hope Scholarship Program: Hope Scholarship West Virginia, September 2026.

If you notice something on this page that is out of date, let us know. Corrections from readers are one of the main ways we keep listings and guides like this one accurate.