Impact Evaluation of Strategies Funding by Title IIA

The U.S. Department of Education (the Department) is conducting market research to determine if sufficient interest and capability exists in the marketplace for the Feasibility and Conduct of an Impact Evaluation of Teacher Residency Programs or Professional Development for Classroom Teachers, hereafter referred to as "TR-PD evaluation". This notice is NOT a request for proposals, but is an invitation for potential offerors to express interest and provide information regarding their relevant knowledge, skills and capabilities. Information submitted in response to this Special Notice may be used to assist the Department in finalizing its acquisition strategy. Additional Notes: The Department will not pay for the provision of any information nor will it compensate any respondents for providing this information. This notice in no way obligates the Government to award any contract to any interested party. Feedback will not be provided to any interested party who submits information to the Department in response to this notice. Please note that all solicitation-related documents in this RFI are draft versions. The content of each document may change substantially between release of this RFI and release of the final solicitation. The final solicitation will be governed by the terms, conditions, instructions, and criteria in that document. Offerors should not rely on the contents of this RFI for preparing final proposals. To the extent that information provided in this document is inconsistent with or contradicts information contained in the final Solicitation, the solicitation controls. Capability Statement and Feedback Submission Instructions Detailed information for the required submission is provided below. Offerors should submit, via email, the following documents to Brian.Farrell@ed.gov with a cc to Ryan.Battad no later than March 28, 2019 at 10:00 AM EST. I. One PDF document that contains your Capability Statement (PDF). II. One PDF document that contains your response to vendor questions. III. One WORD document that contains any comments, track change revisions, or edits to the PWS (Optional/As Applicable). Offerors should submit all three documents in one email. Please note that the Department imposes a 15MB file size limitation. This limitation accounts for potential file size increases associated with Microsoft Cloud services and may be different from earlier Department file size restrictions. Participation in this vendor outreach effort is entirely voluntary. A response to this RFI is not required in order to respond to any solicitation that the Department issues. Contact Information Please note that only the individuals listed below are authorized points of contact for this competition. No members of the IES staff will respond to inquiries. The following members comprise the acquisition team for this procurement: Dissemination of Procurement Information Offerors are strongly encouraged to communicate via email. All questions that the Department receives regarding the procurement will be disclosed to the public via www.FBO.gov. All announcements regarding the procurement will be posted to FBO. ? Request for Capability Statements The Department requests capability statements in order to evaluate what, if any, set aside determinations are appropriate. The Department will not review generic capability statements because generic capability statements tell us nothing about your ability to execute the subject contract. Rather, we will only review capability statements that conform to the specifications provided below. Format and Instructions for Capability Statements Capability statements are limited to 7 double-spaced pages (not including the cover page) and must be submitted in PDF format. The Department will not consider material in excess of 7 pages. 1. Cover Page containing the following information: Name of Company Primary Point of Contact (phone and email) DUNS Number Small Business Status for the applicable NAICS code (if not a small business, please indicate "OTSB" in this field) 2. Substantive Content The capability statement must describe the collective expertise and experience of your company's personnel, in each of the following areas: - Experience and skill in managing, designing and conducting large-scale random assignment studies of interventions designed to improve educational outcomes. Interested parties shall provide a minimum of two examples of personnel's successful past experience and skill in leading, managing, designing, and conducting all aspects of evaluations (preferably in education settings) that are similar to this procurement in content (e.g., teacher effectiveness and policy relevant to Title II-A specifically; teacher residency programs; teacher professional development), methodology (e.g., experimental design; descriptive), complexity (e.g., technical complexity, fidelity of implementation of an intervention), national in scope, large sample sizes, and data collection modes (e.g., interviews, observations, surveys, and collection of district administrative data). - Experience and skill in authoring well written, policy relevant publications with clear take-home messages for wide audiences. Interested parties shall provide a minimum of two examples of personnel's involvement with authoring publications that clearly summarize experimental findings and present them in a manner such that they can be understood and used by a wide audience. - Substantive knowledge relevant to the DRAFT TR-PD evaluation, teacher effectiveness and policy relevant to Title II-A specifically; teacher residency programs; teacher professional development, or other methods of relevant teacher support across geographically dispersed, multi-site settings. Interested parties shall provide a minimum of two examples showing that personnel have relevant knowledge to effectively study and support implementation of the intervention, particularly capitalizing on what is known from the research literature. In addition, the capability statement shall address the following experience and capacity at the corporate level: - Experience with projects similar in nature and scale to that described in the Draft TR-PD evaluation PWS. Interested parties shall provide evidence of successful corporate experience with a minimum of two past projects that are similar to that described in the Draft TR-PD evaluation PWS, in terms of the specific tasks to be performed, scale, and scope required. ? Vendor Questions (1) What, if any, additional information should the Department provide in order to enable you to accurately estimate the price/cost of each task? This includes documents, research materials, more accurate task descriptions, policy information, or other content produced by or utilized by the Department. (2) Are the NAICS and PSC codes appropriate for this procurement? If not, please justify an alternative. (3) Do you agree with the manner of pricing for each task and subtask (i.e. do you agree with the designation of each task as Firm-Fixed Price (FFP) or Cost Reimbursement (CR))? If not, why? If you propose to convert a FFP task to CR please provide a justification. (4) Can you identify any barriers to competition? If so, please identify and describe how the Department could reduce or eliminate those barriers. (5) Please explain whether GSA's OASIS contract vehicle is a suitable alternative to a full and open competition and please identify any other Tier III Category Management contract vehicles in addition to OASIS that may be suitable for this procurement. (6) Please explain whether this procurement should be set-aside for small businesses. Alternatively, please explain why this procurement should not be set-aside. (7) Is there any other information that you wish to convey to the Department?