40-92400-24-CP248_Sole Source - Basis Policy Research.pdf.PDF

2021 Sole Source Form

STATE OF NEW MEXICO

SOLE SOURCE REQUEST AND DETERMINATION FORM

A sole source determination is not effective until the sole source request for determination has been posted for thirty (30) calendar days without challenge, and subsequently approved in writing by the State Purchasing Agent or, for Professional Services Agreements, the Secretary of the General Services Department. The foregoing requirement is regardless of whether the sole source request for determination has been signed by the Agency and/or the Contractor.

I. Name of Agency:

New Mexico Public Education Department

Agency Chief Procurement Officer:

Ann Lucero

Telephone Number:

505-469-9893

Agency Contact for this request:

Phoebe Walendziak

Telephone Number & Email Address:

505-396-1992, phoebe.walendziak@ped.nm.gov

II. Name of prospective Contractor:

Basis Policy Research LLC

SHARE Vendor Number (must be active):

Vendor #: 0000179728

Address of prospective Contractor:

104R NC Hwy 54 West, #304 Carrboro, NC 27510

Contact Name, Telephone Number and Email Address:

Jeffrey A. Springer, Managing Partner 866-542-7908 x101 solutions@basispolicyresearch.com

Amount of prospective contract before tax:

$170,986.00

Estimated tax amount (tax is subject to change):

n/a

DocuSign Envelope ID: 026397F1-A7EB-4C40-8A65-6C416E5D089A mailto:phoebe.walendziak@ped.nm.gov mailto:jaspringer@basispolicyresearch.com

Term of prospective contract:

July 1-December 31, 2024

Note: For terms longer than one year, Request for Policy Exemption from DFA MUST be included.

III. Agency is required to state purpose/need of purchase and thoroughly list the services (scope of work), construction or items of tangible personal property of the prospective contract (if this is an amendment request to an existing contract, include current contract number issued by SPD):

The Public Education Department (PED) has been awarded a five-year, $8,000,000 federal grant through the Education Innovation and Research (EIR) Program from the U.S. Department of Education. The EIR Program supports rigorous evaluation and research to understand the impact of innovative education programs on student outcomes.

PED’s EIR mid-phase grant, NM Residencies, intends to grow high-quality teacher residency preparation programs, where aspiring teachers work for a year alongside an accomplished mentor teacher before being hired. Paid residencies, when designed in strong partnership with districts, have been documented to increase the diversity, effectiveness, and longevity of the teacher workforce. The NM State Legislature has invested significantly in teacher residencies, and this grant will enable the work to scale across the state and undergo rigorous formative and summative evaluation.

NM Residencies has three goals:

1) Strengthen recruitment and selection processes across preparation programs to attract, prepare, and retain a strong teaching force that reflects the state’s student population;

2) Reduce variability of implementation across different residency program types and localities to ensure equitable access to well-prepared teachers; and

3) Create sustainable funding streams with competitive wages so paid residencies can grow and become the norm in New Mexico.

As the EIR Program is a research-focused federal grant program, grant recipients are required to contract with an independent evaluator to conduct an impact study of the program on student outcomes. Moreover, PED received a mid-phase EIR grant which requires that the independent evaluator use a study design that will produce evidence that meets federal What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) design standards without reservations.

The scope of work required to ensure that PED’s EIR grant study design meets WWC design standards without reservations is both time intensive and time sensitive.

Specifically:

• The independent evaluator is required to meet regularly with a liaison from the U.S. Department of Education’s evaluation technical assistant provider, Abt Associates.

DocuSign Envelope ID: 026397F1-A7EB-4C40-8A65-6C416E5D089A

• The independent evaluator is required to submit to the U.S. Department of Education’s evaluation technical assistance provider a partial evaluation plan by July 31, 2024, in the first year of the grant.

• The independent evaluator is required to obtain institutional review board (IRB) approval by an independent ethics committee and the U.S. Department of Education by September 1, 2024, in the first year of the grant. No data collection or analysis may be conducted for PED’s EIR mid-phase grant until the U.S.

Department of Education approves the independent evaluator’s IRB application.

Additionally, EIR mid-phase grant recipients are required to conduct an implementation study, which may be conducted by the grantee rather than an independent evaluator. The implementation study must gather data and report on PED grant activities to inform continuous improvement of the statewide teacher residency program over the entirety of the five-year grant. The implementation study’s design must be included in the full evaluation plan that the independent contractor is required to submit to the U.S.

Department of Education’s evaluation technical assistance provider on January 31, 2025.

PED does not currently have the resources or staffing to design and/or then conduct the implementation study required for this EIR grant.

IV. Provide a detailed explanation of the criteria developed and specified by the agency as necessary to perform and/or fulfill the contract and upon which the state agency reviewed available sources. (Do not use “technical jargon;” use plain English. Do not tailor the criteria simply to exclude other contractors if it is not rationally related to the purpose of the contract.)

The PED identified the following overarching criteria to fulfill EIR Program requirements for the evaluation of PED’s mid-phase grant:

• Select an independent evaluator able to meet with the U.S. Department of Education’s evaluation technical assistance provider monthly beginning March 1, 2024, in the first year of the grant.

• Select an independent evaluator able to refine the proposed impact study design from PED’s mid-phase EIR proposal that meets WWC design standards without reservations, including details on implementation of the study design, data collection, and reporting, for submission to the U.S. Department of Education’s evaluation technical assistance provider by July 31, 2024.

• Select an independent evaluator able to obtain IRB approval for the five-year grant evaluation activities by an independent ethics committee and the U.S.

Department of Education by September 1, 2024, in the first year of the grant.

• Select an independent evaluator with expertise in teacher residencies and an evaluation orientation that centers participants’ experiences and knowledge to design an implementation study for the full evaluation plan to be submitted to the U.S. Department of Education’s evaluation technical assistance provider by January 31, 2025.

V. Provide a detailed, sufficient explanation of the reasons, qualifications, proprietary rights or unique capabilities of the prospective contractor that makes the prospective contractor the one source capable of providing the required professional service, service, construction or item(s) of tangible personal property. (Please do not state the source is the “best” source or the “least costly” source. Those factors do not justify a “sole source.”)

Basis Policy Research (Basis) is an independent research firm specializing in applied research and evaluation in PreK-16 education. Basis has been identified as the prospective sole source contractor to conduct the independent evaluation of PED’s mid phase EIR grant for the following reasons:

• Given the research-focus of the EIR Program, PED identified Basis as an independent evaluator partner to be responsible for the evaluation plan section of two EIR grant proposals. Basis collaborated with PED for two years to understand the components of New Mexico’s statewide teacher residency program and the analytic approach needed to study its impact. This longstanding partnership and Basis’s understanding of the New Mexico context made Basis the sole independent evaluator capable of developing and writing an evaluation plan for PED’s two proposal submissions to EIR, one in July 2022 and the other in July 2023.

• For PED’s mid-phase EIR proposal, the evaluation plan section that Basis designed and wrote was reviewed by the U.S. Department of Education before the rest of PED’s proposal. Reviewers deemed that Basis’s evaluation plan portion of the proposal met the requirements for WWC design standards without reservations, which led to the rest of PED’s EIR mid-phase proposal to move forward to review.

• Because of Basis’s significant work to design and revise PED’s EIR mid-phase evaluation plan, Basis is the sole independent evaluator with whom PED could contract to meet the July 31, 2024, deadline to submit a partial evaluation plan with an impact study design that meets WWC design standards without reservations to the U.S. Department of Education’s evaluation technical assistance provider.

• Because of Basis’s significant work to design and revise PED’s EIR mid-phase evaluation plan, Basis is the sole independent evaluator with whom PED could contract to obtain IRB approval for the five-year grant evaluation activities by an independent ethics committee and the U.S. Department of Education by September 1, 2024, in the first year of the grant.

• Basis has developed a comprehensive, holistic, and proprietary implementation framework that centers participants’ experiences and knowledge and referenced this framework in PED’s EIR mid-phase proposal to demonstrate how PED could meet the grant’s implementation study requirement. Basis is the sole independent evaluator with whom PED could contract to execute the implementation framework as described in PED’s EIR mid-phase proposal given that this implementation framework is proprietary to Basis. PED would need instead to identify and engage a third-party evaluator to develop an alternative implementation study without access to Basis’ grant-winning implementation framework.

VI. Provide a detailed, sufficient explanation of how the professional service, service, construction or item(s) of tangible personal property is/are unique and how this uniqueness is substantially related to the intended purpose of the contract.

Basis is uniquely positioned to deliver the following evaluation services to fulfill PED’s EIR mid-phase grant requirements:

• Given Basis’ understanding of New Mexico’s statewide teacher residency program, long standing partnership with PED in developing and submitting research-focused grant proposals to study its impact on student outcomes, and design and authorship of the evaluation plan in PED’s awarded mid-phase grant, Basis is the sole independent evaluator able to refine the proposed impact study design that meets WWC design standards without reservations (including details on implementation of the study design, data collection, and reporting) for submission to the U.S. Department of Education’s evaluation technical assistance provider by July 31, 2024. Producing this evaluation plan de novo would require at least three months of new evaluator identification, engagement, and work, thereby preventing the project from meeting the U.S. Department of Education’s July 31, 2024, deadline.

• Given Basis’ significant work to design the evaluation plan for PED’s mid-phase EIR grant, Basis is the sole independent evaluator able to obtain IRB approval for the five-year grant evaluation activities by an independent ethics committee and the U.S. Department of Education by September 1, 2024, in the first year of the grant. It would take an alternative independent evaluator a minimum of six months to both design the evaluation plan and prepare an IRB application for review, which would fail to meet the U.S. Department of Education’s September 1, 2024, deadline.

• Given the inclusion of Basis’s proprietary implementation framework in PED’s mid-phase EIR proposal to meet the implementation study requirements, Basis is the sole independent evaluator to execute the implementation study described in PED’s winning proposal for submission to the U.S. Department of Education’s evaluation technical assistance provider by January 31, 2025. PED otherwise would need to contract with an alternative independent evaluator to design an entirely new implementation framework from what was developed by Basis and included in PED’s mid-phase grant proposal.

VII. Explain why other similar professional services, services, construction or item(s) of tangible personal property cannot meet the intended purpose of the contract.

Basis has the unique capacity as an independent evaluator to meet the criteria set forth in section VI, which includes meeting key EIR Program evaluation deadlines in the first year of the grant. PED would not meet the evaluation requirements of the EIR mid-phase grant if an alternative independent evaluator to Basis were to miss key study design and IRB deadlines.

VIII. Provide a narrative description of the agency’s due diligence in determining the basis for the procurement, including procedures used by the agency to conduct a review of available sources such as researching trade publications, industry newsletters and the internet;

contacting similar service providers; and reviewing the State Purchasing Divisions’ Statewide Price Agreements. Include a list of businesses contacted (do not state that no other businesses were contacted), date of contact, method of contact (telephone, mail, e mail, other), and documentation demonstrating an explanation of why those businesses could not or would not, under any circumstances, perform the contract; or an explanation of why the agency has determined that no businesses other than the prospective contractor can perform the contract.

Additionally, PED has determined that no business other than Basis Policy Research can perform the contract.

Over the course of many years working with evaluators, PED leadership and other professional colleagues and collaborators have learned the importance of partnering with groups and individuals who reflect the values of the PED. These values include centering teachers, students, and preparation programs in every decision. When evaluation includes formative and summative feedback loops and continuous review and refinement, projects are more likely to make changes that will improve student and teacher outcomes.

Evaluation groups, in an effort to stay objective, often separate themselves from the work on the ground, making decisions strictly based on technical evaluation considerations.

The resultant mismatch between the evaluation processes and project values can lead to significant friction, inefficiencies, lost opportunity for program refinement and course corrections, and failure to fulfill program goal and objectives, including targeted student and educator outcomes.

Basis also offers a proprietary evaluation process that makes their work responsive to the field while also upholding the highest evaluation standards – standards that the EIR proposal process required we meet even before considering the project for funding.

Basis’ technical experience and expertise, in essence, paved the way for this project to exist.

In addition, Basis’ unique orientation towards evaluation is critically important to the success of the project, as the field must feel confident that the findings have considered all the realities on the ground. Basis provides that assurance through their proprietary evaluation processes.

PED leadership discussions with other grantees at the national EIR conference confirmed the importance of working with groups that deeply understand both the goals and daily workings of the project, share project and PESD values, and can be responsive to project needs in a timely fashion, while also providing both formative and summative feedback loops to ensure project success. No other evaluator than Basis knows this project’s context and values and has the technical capacity to both submit an evaluation plan that meets federal guidance and WWC design standards and meet the impending federal deadlines related to project evaluation and performance reporting.

Lastly, and per standard procedures, PED contacted Horizons of New Mexico via email on April 4th, 2024 to offer the contract; Horizons declined the scope of work required to provide the service of evaluation for the NM Residencies project.

Certified by: Date:____________________

Agency Chief Procurement Officer

Agency Approval by: Date: ____________________

Cabinet Secretary/Agency or Entity Head or Designee

APPROVED: Date:

State Purchasing Agent

If this sole source is being submitted by a governmental agency or governmental entity not under the final authority of the State Purchasing Agent, the State Purchasing Agent’s signature is not required. The signature line may be removed from this form or marked as N/A. Hard Copy Documentation for Courtesy Postings do not need to be submitted to SPD for approval.

DocuSign Envelope ID: 026397F1-A7EB-4C40-8A65-6C416E5D089A

6/21/2024

6/24/2024

I. Name of Agency: