Can I use ESA funds for an AI literacy course?

Yes, in every major education savings account program — curriculum is an eligible expense everywhere these accounts exist. The obstacle is rarely eligibility. It is whether the publisher you want has been approved as a vendor in your specific state, because approval does not carry across state lines even on the same platform.

Program rules change. Your state's own handbook is the authority, and this is not legal or financial advice.

The three platforms you will meet

ClassWallet runs the marketplace for Arizona's Empowerment Scholarship Account, Arkansas's Children's Educational Freedom Account and Alabama's CHOOSE Act, among others. Vendors are approved per state program — an Arizona approval does not make a vendor available in Arkansas.

Odyssey runs Texas Education Freedom Accounts, Utah Fits All and Iowa's Students First ESA. Separate vendor portal per state; Texas additionally requires out-of-state businesses to register as a foreign entity with the Secretary of State.

Step Up For Students runs Florida's Family Empowerment Scholarship through MyScholarShop — the largest single program in the country.

West Virginia's Hope Scholarship is the one that trips people up: it is administered by Student First Technologies, not ClassWallet, and the Hope Scholarship Board pre-approves vendors separately.

Roughly what is available

Per-student amounts vary widely and change annually. As a rough current picture: Arizona around seven thousand dollars or more depending on need; Arkansas around six thousand eight hundred; Alabama seven thousand for private school with a lower home-education cap; Texas two thousand for homeschool, around ten thousand five hundred private, more for disability; Utah around eight thousand; Iowa around seven thousand eight hundred; Florida around eight thousand with more for unique abilities; West Virginia around five thousand.

Against those numbers, a thirty or fifty dollar semester of curriculum is not the decision. It is a rounding error, and that is worth remembering when a marketplace's paperwork makes it feel like a bigger one.

What the marketplaces ask you to show

Arizona is the most documentation-heavy and a good worst case to plan against. Curriculum purchases generally need a course of study, learning objectives and lesson-plan evidence, and Direct Pay reimbursements go through an ADE form with a processing fee. A publisher who cannot hand you a one-page course of study on request is going to cost you an afternoon.

So the practical question to ask before buying is not "is this eligible" but "can you send me a course of study, an objectives list and an invoice in my state's format?" Any serious publisher will say yes immediately.

If the publisher is not in your marketplace

This is common and usually solvable. Three routes, in order of how often they work.

Ask the publisher to apply. Most small publishers are willing and simply have not got to your state yet. Approval timelines vary from days to a couple of months.

Buy direct and reimburse. Several programs allow purchase-and-reimburse with a compliant invoice. Check your handbook, because some do not, and an unreimbursable purchase is your own money.

Buy through a marketplace the publisher is in. Teachers Pay Teachers is a common route for independent curriculum — but note that TpT is not itself an approved ESA vendor in the programs we have checked, including Utah Fits All and Arizona, so buying there is usually a personal purchase rather than an ESA one.

Two things that are easy to get wrong

Approval is per program, not per platform. A vendor listed on ClassWallet is listed for particular states. The directory you are browsing is your state's.

Programs can be litigated. Utah Fits All is running under appeal after a district court ruled it unconstitutional, pending the Utah Supreme Court. Funds have continued to flow and 2026-27 money was released in July, but a family planning several years of purchases should know the ground is not entirely settled.

Where ZEROTH is

We sell ZEROTH through Teachers Pay Teachers and directly, and we are working through ESA vendor approval state by state — Utah, Alabama, Arizona and Iowa first, because those are where an AI-education mandate and ESA money overlap. If your program does not list us yet, write to us: we will apply, and in the meantime we can invoice you directly in the format your program requires, with the course of study and objectives attached. Nothing about that costs you extra.