U.S. Department of Education, Contracts and Purchasing Operations, CPO, Support Services Group, 7th & D Streets SW, Room 3616, Washington, D.C. 20202-4443

A -- BROAD AGENCY ANNOUNCEMENT -- DESIGN OF COMPREHENSIVE SCHOOL REFORM MODELS SOL ERD 99CS01 DUE 041999 POC Helen Chang, Contracting Officer, 202-708-9740 The United States Department of Education (ED) requests proposals for the design of comprehensive school reform models. In this new research and development program, ED is particularly interested in models that hold the promise of increasing outcomes for adolescent students. Designs are to include the strategies, procedures, materials, and teacher professional development required to initiate, support, and sustain the comprehensive reform of schools in order to realize high achievement for all students. ED cautions that this solicitation is not intended to support improvement efforts in individual schools or districts, but rather to support research, design, and evaluation efforts resulting in comprehensive school reform strategies that will ultimately touch many schools in various communities, districts and states.ED will use a two-step submission process to evaluate and select proposals submitted in response to this announcement. FIRST, ED is requesting concept papers, not to exceed 15 pages, which will be evaluated by one or more peer review panels. SECOND, ED will request full technical and cost proposals only from those offerors with the most highly rated concept papers. Those offerors will be invited to attend bidders' conference in Washington, DC prior to submitting the full proposal. ED anticipates awarding multiple contracts for performance periods of up to 5 years, with total 5-year costs for each contract expected to range between $7.5 and $12 million. ED expects to award a total of $12,000,000 in the first year and additional amounts in subsequent years. Because this is a research and development activity, it is possible that not all contracts will be extended beyond the initial design year. Continuation depends upon the performance in creating an initial design for further development. Option years will be at the government's discretion. BACKGROUND INFORMATION. The performance of schools serving adolescents, largely high schools and middle schools, has long been a major concern of educational policy makers. Particularly in schools serving at risk populations, too many of their students drop out. Employers and post-secondary institutions view high proportions of their graduates as possessing inadequate basic skills when they do graduate. Too many graduates do not possess the capacity to communicate, reason, and continue to learn that is desired by the nation's employers and thus face daunting challenges to pursuing economically and personally rewarding careers. Recently, the Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration Program has provided resources to encourage reform of schools using research-based, whole-school models and technical assistance associated with such models. Early experience with this program has led to general agreement that there are an inadequate number and variety of such models or designs for schools serving adolescents. This announcement seeks proposals to create designs for such schools, conduct evaluation and research to demonstrate that the designs have promise to raise student achievement, and can create the capacity to help significant numbers of schools to adopt and implement the designs. In particular, ED seeks concept papers of no more than 15 pages from individuals, institutions, or teams that propose design concepts for schools serving adolescents as well as strategies for helping schools to implement these designs. The emphasis shall be on designs for schools serving high proportions of students at risk but it is hoped that the designs will have wide applicability. Materials that support the proposed design and describe the capabilities of the proposed team may accompany the concept papers. It is anticipated that the research and formative evaluation component of the effort will be significant in scope. The desire is to provide research-based feedback to the designers to help them perfect their design as well as to build a record of the implementation and performance of the design that will help potential adopters of the design to make decisions about whether it fits theirneeds. The Department expects to create a capacity to facilitate and encourage collaboration among the research and evaluation components of design teams. DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS. The general requirements in preparing the concept paper are straightforward: Explain what you hope to accomplish. Describe your basic concept and how you will develop it. Identify key people who will be involved. Suggest the research and/or experience that support your design concept. Indicate how you will learn if it works. Explain how you expect to help others to put your design in place. Provide a rough indication of what the design effort will cost. Teams contemplating submitting a concept paper in response to this announcement may want to consider the following issues as they frame their papers. THERE IS NO NEED TO ADDRESS EACH OF THESE ISSUES IN THE CONCEPT PAPER. Offerors should prepare their papers in the way that best conveys what they propose to do and meets the criteria that are listed below. 1. Design Elements -- A comprehensive school reform model is likely to include but not be limited to: A vision that unifies the efforts of the school. Standards describing the knowledge and skills that students at the school are expected to acquire. At a minimum, these standards should include those established by the states and district in which the design is implemented. However, the design team may want to establish or help schools using the design to establish additional standards that they seek to achieve. urriculum or strategies to develop curriculum appropriate to the needs of the students. Designers may choose to use existing curricular programs, develop or refine new programs, or provide guidance to schools in developing their own curriculum. Particular attention should be paid to the needs of the students to be served. nstructional strategies for some of or the entire program. Instructional schedule. Designers of existing comprehensive school reform models have found that scheduling is a key feature of a design both in terms of creating effective instructional experiences and allowing teachers time to plan and reflect. Strategies for the professional development of school staff. Ways in which technology may be integrated into the instructional program. Engagement with parents and community. eadership selection and training. Much research supports the importance of good school level leadership and the design could include components dealing with the leadership function. Tools to assess school readiness to implement a design and/or to analyze its performance as a guide to improvement. 2. Key Issues for Schools that Serve Adolescents -- There are many important issues involved in designing schools serving adolescents that comprehensive school reform model designers may want to discuss. For example: The size of the school. Many practitioners and researchers have argued that small schools better serve the needs of students. Others argue that they are economically infeasible and provide inadequate choices of curricular programs. Designers may want to make school size a key part of their design. More generally, what emphasis, if any, does the design place on the social organization of the school? Gaining legitimacy with the community, employers, and post-secondary institutions. Dealing with college admission standards and parent anxiety in schools that revise programs in ways that are not narrowly congruent with stated admissions requirements of major colleges and universities. pproaches to traditional disciplinary (subject matter) focus in high school and middle school faculties. Approaches to promoting civic responsibility in students. 3. Key Issues For Rural Schools -- In the initial months of the implementation of the federal government's Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration program, many rural schools and states with high numbers of rural schools found that well-known design organizations were reluctant to offer their services. These teams felt that they could not economically provide such services and that, even if they were able to charge higher fees for their services, they lacked adequate staff to serve such schools. Many comprehensive school reform designers try to work with clusters of schools in a small geographic area so that trainers can be in a school on a frequent basis to provide assistance and monitor progress. This clustering is impossible in most rural areas. In addition, some rural schools serve distinctive populations such as Native Americans. Other schools possess a scale that is far smaller than most urban schools and may serve a wider grade range than such schools. It is likely that already existing models, if modified and tailored to better meet the needs of the rural areas the design team intends to serve, are appropriate for many rural schools. To meet the needs of these schools, more efficient and effective means of delivering assistance services are needed. Telecommunications and other technology seem a natural means of meeting some of these needs. Distance learning techniques as well as more extensive use of CD-ROMs and other instructional materials might substitute for at least some direct assistance. E-mail may be even more important for rural areas than it is in many urban settings. Some of the key considerations should be: What is your current strategy for implementing the design and what changes would it require to better serve rural schools? What actions are needed to increase your capacity to meet the needs of rural schools? ow will the school understand the design and its applicability to its needs before it chooses the design? How will assistance services be provided? If the capacity building strategy involves the use of technology, what is the general configuration of that technology and its likely costs to the school and team? What experience or research supports your approach to building capacity to serve rural schools? A key issue is the model's promise to yield implementation costs that are within reach of rural schools. What are the implications of the strategy you propose for the cost of implementing your design? 4. Strategy for Implementation -- Experience gained from past comprehensive school reform models indicates that strategies for implementing a design are as important as the design itself in achieving improvements in performance outcomes. The ultimate goal of the models is whole school reform but the strategies for achieving such reform may begin with only parts of a school. They may initially focus on specific groups of students or particular school functions. Among the issues design teams need to consider are: Will the design be initially introduced to the entire school, a grade level, or some other group? What role will the design and the design team play in the professional development of teachers? If school size is a key element of a design, what is the proposed approach to achieving that size? How will assistance related to the implementation of the design be delivered? What if any role will technology play in the implementation strategy? 5. Development Strategy -- Experiencehas shown that, for most successful models, the designs and implementation strategies were co-developed by design teams consisting of members of the research, development, and practitioner communities. Offerors may choose to describe the manner in which this design and development will unfold and the partners that will be involved. 6. Research and Evaluation -- Research and evaluation must be integral and important parts of the entire design, development, and testing effort. Research and evaluation should play several roles. They should inform the designers about the nature of the challenges that the design is confronting. Evaluation should measure student outcomes and provide feedback on the effects that implementation of the design is having. Research and evaluation should help the designers to refine and validate the general principles that underlie the design. Research findings should provide information for potential future implementers of the design. ED expects to create a complementary and collaborative research and evaluation effort to be associated with all the design efforts that are supported. It is anticipated that researchers and evaluators associated with all teams will collaborate with the Department's overarching effort to maximize the research benefits of the entire effort. This may require that contractors expend funds to travel to and participate in Department-sponsored meetings or workshops throughout the contract period. This overarching effort is likely to include the collection of some common elements of evaluation data. 7. Concept for Scale-Up -- This competition is intended to create designs with assistance capabilities that will ultimately touch many schools. Achieving this end should be integral to the design and development effort. Simply reporting on the design at professional meetings or in professional publication is inconsistent with the goals of this competition. Offerors should give some consideration to this issue in their concept paper. In March, 1999, ED intends to postgeneral information about its comprehensive school reform research and development program and the issues surrounding the development of comprehensive school reform models on the Department's website, at the following address: http://www.ed.gov/offices/OERI. Printed copies, once available, may be obtained by calling 1-877-4-ED-pubs. Please note that the information contained on the website is for information and guidance only. TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS. ED solicits proposals for the design, development, and testing (or the adaptation and testing) of comprehensive school reform models designed to meet the needs of schools serving adolescent students, with particular emphasis on schools serving at-risk students, and schools in rural and isolated areas. The central goal of this research and development must be to develop and evaluate models that help practitioners facing differing problems in differing settings attack and solve those problems. The research and design effort must be carried out with deep concern for producing principles, theories, conceptual frameworks, materials, tools, and expertise that will "travel," that is, are applicable in a number of settings. This task may be approached in a number of ways. For example: a new model design for schools serving middle and high school age students may be created; an existing elementary school model design may be adapted for use in schools serving adolescents; or a limited approach to school improvement for adolescents may be expanded into a comprehensive school design. In addition, existing design organizations with well-developed models are encouraged to submit proposals to modify both their model and their delivery systems to effectively and efficiently meet the needs of rural schools for comprehensive school reform. While it is not the government's intent to support the development of entirely new technology models under this program, appropriate tailoring of existing models to rural needs is encouraged. It is anticipated that technology in a variety of forms will be a core element of such proposals. In any of these efforts, data that meet the highest standards of evidence must be collected at every step in model design, implementation, and testing to provide information to assess strength and fidelity of implementation and the impact of the model on student achievement in particular settings and for particular student populations. At the end of each year of the project, the design team shall deliver to the government a report reflecting demonstrable progress, including research findings and all work products, such as materials produced for use by model developers, trainers, schools, teachers, or students. Concept papers shall clearly state the purpose, objectives, and rationale of the proposed comprehensive school reform model. After considering the background material discussed above, an offeror should prepare its concept paper that conveys the offeror's concept and theory of action in a way that best conveys what is proposed and addresses the following technical evaluation criteria: 1) Quality of the proposed model design or design concept, together with its supporting justification. Maximum points: 30. 2) Quality of the proposed design implementation strategy, scale-up strategy, and research and evaluation strategy. Maximum points: 30 3) Qualifications and appropriateness of the composition of the team proposing to carry out the proposed efforts. Maximum points: 30. 4) Capacity of offeror and quality of the management strategy. Maximum points: 10. SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS. CONCEPT PAPERS. To be considered, an original and nine copies of a concept paper shall be received by 2:00 p.m. EST, April 19, 1999 at the address stated above. All concept papers should include the identifier (ERD 99CSO1) on the envelope and on the first page. Concept papers shall include, in the following order: a title page; a narrative not to exceed 15 pages; short synopsis (no more than = page each) of the pertinent training and experience of each proposed key personnel; and a one-page cost estimate, which shall list estimated total costs for each year of the project. The narrative of the concept paper should provide an overview of the project and shall not exceed 15 pages, including any tables, graphs, or other exhibits (reviewers will not read beyond the fifteenth page), on plain 8.5 x 11-inch paper with printing on only one side of each page. Concept papers should be prepared with 12 point or larger font, and one-inch margins on all sides. ED will evaluate all concept papers against the first technical evaluation criteria described in this announcement. ED may use more than one review panel if needed. FULL PROPOSALS. At the time offerors are invited to submit full proposals, they will be advised of the deadline for ED's receipt of those proposals. In the invitation for a full proposal, ED will specify proposal format and the representations and certifications required under the Federal Acquisitions Regulations, the Education Department Acquisitions Regulations and other ED clauses to be included in the contract(s) that will result from the BAA. The Technical Proposal shall include the requirement for an offeror-developed Statement of Work (SOW), a summary chart specifying each proposed staff member's (by name) commitment to each task and subtask by project year, and a Schedule of Deliverables. ED will evaluate the SOW and technical proposal against the second technical evaluation criteria described in this announcement. The Cost Proposal must provide sufficient detail to allow assessment of cost realism and the offeror's capacity to perform the work proposed. All offerors who are requested to submit complete proposals must specify performance indicators for their projects in the full proposal. An invitation to submit a full proposal does not assure subsequent award. No award will be made under this BAA without a full technical and cost proposal and past performance evaluation. Past performance criteria shall be addressed in the request and shall include a request for contract performance information from relevant organizations. AWARD PROCESS. Both the concept papers and full proposals will be evaluated by one or more peer review panels. The expected award date is September 28, 1999. ED reserves the right to select for award any, all, or none of the proposals received and to make selections that reflect a balance of approaches and target populations. The Government will make award to the responsible offerors(s) whose offer conforms to the solicitation, has no deficiencies, (as defined in FAR 15.301) and is most advantageous to the Government, cost and other factors Posted 03/03/99 (I-SN304392). (0062)

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