Recognizing the challenges rural districts face in providing broad curricular offerings and supplemental educational services to students, in 2007, the 80th Texas Legislature authorized the creation of a pilot program designed to provide technology-based supplemental educational services to rural school districts that show an overall academic need as demonstrated by their 2007 state accountability ratings. The Rural Technology (R-Tech) Pilot Program provides nearly $8 million in funding for technology-based supplemental education programs, including online courses, to students in Grades 6 through 12 in high-need, rural districts. In establishing R-Tech, Legislators called for the pilot program to be evaluated to assess its effectiveness, requiring an interim report in December 2008 and a final evaluation report in December 2010. The following results are drawn from the evaluation's first interim report (Texas Center for Educational Research [TCER], December 2008). The interim report describes the characteristics of R-Tech districts and campuses, the students they enroll, and the teachers they employ. It presents baseline data on students' academic outcomes and describes how districts plan to implement the R-Tech program in their schools. Report sections provide baseline information and are descriptive in nature. They provide important information about the context for and implementation of the R-Tech pilot program, but they do not comprise an assessment of the pilot's effectiveness. A comprehensive evaluation report, due in December 2010, will evaluate the pilot program's effectiveness, including its effect on students' academic achievement and college readiness outcomes, as well as its cost effectiveness. [For the full report, "The Texas Rural Technology (R-TECH) Pilot Program: Interim Evaluation Report," see ED536698.]