Three of your six hours are decided by the legislature, not by the provider.

The part nobody can change

Texas requires that the CPE cover health protection, water conservation and energy conservation. Those are not a provider's editorial choice. They are in the law, and every approved course carries them.

That answers a question plumbers ask constantly, which is why every six hour class sounds roughly the same on the syllabus. Half of it is legislated.

Why those three

Health protection is the reason plumbing is a licensed trade at all. Everything else in the code is downstream of keeping contaminated water out of a potable system. If a state is going to require six hours of anything, that is the hour it requires first.

Water and energy conservation are there because plumbing is where a building actually spends both. Fixture flow, hot water distribution, and the losses in between are the plumber's decisions, made on rough in, and they are permanent once the walls close.

What fills the rest

The remaining hours go to code and rule changes, Texas plumbing law, and jobsite safety. That is where providers actually differ, because there is no script for it. What changed this year, what it means on a real job, and which mistakes put a license in front of the board are judgment calls made by whoever wrote the course.

So how do you pick

Not on the topic list, because the topic list is close to identical everywhere. Pick on who is teaching it and whether they have done the work. Six hours with somebody who has never hung the pipe is six hours of somebody reading to you.

All field notes