All students who live in the state of Arkansas and are eligible for public schooling in this state are eligible to sign up and participate in the Education Freedom Accounts. You must opt out full-time public education and choose private or homeschooling to receive the funding. You can still utilize some programs and part-time enrollment options in a public school as a homeschooler. These accounts provide funding for curricula, co-ops, co-curricular classes, extra-curricular (at a 25% of funding spending cap) and therapies and testing needed for special needs students.

There are online schools and virtual academies that are vendors and are in fact considered homeschool options.

‍Arkansas Virtual Academy and Arkansas Connections Academy are public charter schools and enrollment makes students ineligible for EFA funds.

Enrolling in those options makes students ineligible for funding as those are public schools online.

The 2026-2027 school year will see an increase in the funding amount.

These amounts represent the NET amount to the student after transaction fees, sop families can spend 100% of this amount next year:

Non-Succeed - $7208 total: $1802 Quarterly

Succeed - $8011 total: $2002.75 quarterly

What are the funding dates for 2026-27?

These are the tentative funding dates for next year.

Q1 - August 20

Q2 - October 29

Q3 - February 4

Q4 - April 8

To receive funding for the 2026-2027 school year, your student is required to take a standardized test in the spring of 2027. The state has a list of approved tests HERE.

This year the Atlas test will also be offered to homeschoolers but details on test sites are not yet available.

Spring is defined as a tests date between March 1, 2026 and May 31, 2026 for the current school year and Between March 1, 2027 and May 31st 2027 for the coming school year. Tests taken before March 1st will not be usable to fulfill the testing requirement. Tests taken AFTER May 31st are acceptable IF you can receive results in time for a June 30th submission deadline. This makes it possible to do certain online testing in early JUNE but no paper tests taken that late will have results ready on time.

Test scores must be submitted no later than June 30, 2026 via an upload sent to your email by the ADE office for this current school year.

We have test reviews on THIS page and will continue to add reviews as they are received to help with you test selection decision.

This one gets tricky. There will be items that are in stores in the Marketplace and in stores of businesses in direct pay that will not qualify for the program even though the company is a vendor. Not ALL items a vendor sells will be a qualifying item or expense.

There is not a good way for most vendors to separate what is approved in the state from other products simply. It’s slightly easier in direct pay for them to make a single page for AR - EFA but some of the store’s setups do not make that a simple project to accomplish.

A good rule of thumb when choosing to use reimbursement versus direct pay or marketplace is to ONLY buy what you can afford to spend if it is not approved. Or to keep items and the receipt just in case you need to return an item.

If a direct pay or marketplace order were to get rejected, you at least are out $0 and have no worries about how to manage the payment.

Do not be concerned if you need to reimburse for actual curriculum. All actual core subject curriculum is 100% reimbursable just be certain you are getting a proper receipt and its not even bad to make things even easier to upload your CC or bank statement sheet with it showing the payment clearing.

Yes, you can buy a student desk and chair.

The typical limit is $300 for a desk, and $150 for a chair. The chair cannot be a gaming chair.

The ADE acknowledges that having a set workspace is beneficial to students but in the same this program is here to help you EDUCATE your student not redecorate.

THE LIMIT IS ONE OF EACH PER STUDENT.

NO shelves and NO storage items are approved by the program.

The state added a policy allowing reimbursement for travel to and from approved classes, schools, extra-curriculars and tutoring services. This rate is reimbursed at $0.52 per mile. You need to document and submit a fully filled in accurate spreadsheet tracking your milage. You can use THIS page to see the rules for tracking and to download spreadsheet templates that have all of the requirements labeled already for you.

You can elect to split the cost of an expensive item that multiple children will share. Please do not split a $20 case of crayons between 10 children that’s a waste of everyone’s time. But there are times when its warranted. THIS page has a step by step on what to do.

If you used vouchers to private school last year and have now decided to homeschool, go into your FACTS account and change from private school to homeschool, then file a notice of intent online. You must then unlink from the private school and link to Homeschool Do Not Pay in classwallet. If you enroll in a Microschool you must link it AND link homeschool and still must file a NOI. Microschool students are legally homeschool students and must follow the homeschool laws with a NOI.

Memberships to Little Rock Zoo, and Museums in state and State Gardens are approved under extracurricular which means they are allowed but come out of 25% ($1716 max per year) allotment for Field Trips, Extra curriculars and any equipment or uniforms required for the extracurricular.

If you can buy a child only pass, then get that if you only have ONE child or get the family pass if it shows a break down per person (like museum of discovery) they will reimburse the children’s portions.

If you will use the family pass and the cost is of minimal difference or less than several students’ individual passes, they will approve the family pass.

ANY TIME a family pass is cheaper than getting the individual passes needed for your funded students, you can opt for the family pass.

When submitting a family pass that multiple students are using you will need to split the cost between your students.

To do this you will want to follow THESE instructions.

You can follow the instructions in THIS LINK.