Rural Pathway Excellence Partnerships: How Texas Is Transforming Rural Education
Empower Schools’ R-PEP explainer provides an easy guide to Rural Pathway Excellence Partnerships, a Texas model that helps rural school districts work together to expand college and career pathways for students.
Created through Texas HB 2209, R-PEP supports formal collaborations among independent school districts, higher education partners, and workforce partners. These partnerships help rural students access high-quality pathways aligned to regional workforce needs, including fields such as medical services, construction, oil and gas, HVAC, welding, education, and STEM.
This resource connects to Empower Schools’ Rural Collaboratives and Early College and Career Pathways work by showing how policy, funding, and regional partnerships can help rural communities expand student opportunity.
In this resource:
What Rural Pathway Excellence Partnerships are
How Texas is using R-PEP to support rural education and workforce development
How school districts, higher education institutions, and workforce partners collaborate through R-PEP
What benefits R-PEP provides for rural students, districts, and communities
Where to find official Texas Education Agency R-PEP resources and current program information
Best for: rural district leaders, state education leaders, policymakers, workforce partners, higher education partners, funders, and community leaders exploring Rural Collaboratives or college and career pathways.
