RFI - Longitudinal Survey Operations (Final).pdf

U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences

National Center for Education Statistics

Request for Information

Modernizing NCES Longitudinal Surveys Programs

1. Introduction The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a principal statistical agency working out of the Institute of Education Sciences in the U.S. Department of Education, intends to reform and modernize its longitudinal surveys, which accounts for approximately 40% of the NCES statistics budget1 every year. In recent years three challenges have impacted NCES’ ability to continue its longitudinal surveys as was done in previous years:

1. Inflation has impacted NCES’ purchasing power and has reduced NCES’ ability to field studies as has been done historically. requiring the cancellation of several studies.

2. Cooperation and response rates have fallen over time as schools and school districts need to comply with other laws and regulations.

3. Innovations in survey methods and data science aren’t being leveraged because they require investment and testing before being deployed.

To address these challenges, NCES is conducting market research to re-design the process for procuring services to field survey operations starting with:

• postsecondary surveys in FY 2025 (National Postsecondary Student Aid Study and longitudinal surveys),

• high school surveys in FY 2026 (High School and Beyond Longitudinal Study of 2022 postsecondary/workforce follow-up collections), and

• early childhood surveys in FY 2028 or FY 2029.

The primary objective is to reduce duplication of services, maximize economies of scale to maintain the same level of operations in the short term, and apply more economical survey practices to our data collection efforts.

2. Background Since 1972, NCES has been regularly engaged in longitudinal surveys at all education levels.

NCES currently has three active programs that follow students over time covering early childhood through postsecondary education and the workforce. They include:

• High School Longitudinal Studies Program (1972 – Present) o High School and Beyond Family of Studies

National Longitudinal Study of 1972

1 The statistics budget excludes the National Assessment of Education Progress.

High School and Beyond Longitudinal Study of 1980

National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988

Education Longitudinal Study of 2002

High School Longitudinal Study of 2009

High School and Beyond Longitudinal Study of 2022

• Postsecondary Longitudinal Sample Survey Studies Program (1987 – Present) o National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (1987, 1990, 1993, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, 2018-AC, 2020, 2024) o Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (1990, 1996, 2004, 2012, 2020) o Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study (1993, 2000, 2008, 2016, discontinued)

• Early Childhood Longitudinal Studies Program (1998 – Present) o Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (1998, 2011, 2024) o Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (2001)

With the passage of the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018 (Evidence Act), NCES has been given additional tools that can leverage administrative data from other Federal agencies and non-government entities to improve education statistics. This may provide potential solutions to the challenges described above, allowing NCES to supplement or replace responses from study participants with administrative data. Doing so, however, is not straightforward since administrative data systems may not have data elements that align with the topics and constructs needed to address research questions in NCES studies. Research and development are required to understand the costs and benefits of using administrative data for this purpose.

3. Proposal for Future Contracts Currently, each contract is awarded by content area with one for Early Childhood, a set of two to three contracts for the High School Studies, and up to three for postsecondary studies. Each contract encompasses all activities required to conduct a major survey including project management, information technology (including all IT security activities required for systems authorized to hold data from the Department of Education), survey operations (call centers, field operations, etc.), data dissemination, and the writing of reports.

NCES is considering a restructuring of the contracts within the Longitudinal Surveys Program.

Specifically, NCES is investigating the feasibility of competing contracts based on activity rather than topic. The following groups are proposed:

Design, Monitoring, and Dissemination Contracts (Survey Ops-DMD) – These contracts will be awarded by content area and will assist with the fielding of the study.

Activities include frame development, sampling, instrument development, instrument programming, technical review panels, cognitive testing, monitoring field operations for field or pilot tests, monitoring field operations for full-scale studies, administrative data matching, data processing, data product development, publications, and dissemination.

Three contract types are envisioned:

• DMD-1 – Early Childhood through Middle Grades

• DMD-2 – High School through Workforce

• DMD-3 – Postsecondary through Workforce

Call Center and Field Operations (Survey Ops-CCF) – This contract will include field operations across all longitudinal studies and may include programs outside the Longitudinal Surveys Branch. Operations will include call center, help desk, in-person interviews, (household or schools), in-person assessments (household or schools), and web-assisted collections (on Government Servers).

Information Technology (Survey Ops-IT) – This contract will include all information technology operations so that all Longitudinal Surveys will operate within one large information system. This system will be on Government servers but will be contractor procured and operated. One system instead of three is envisioned. This contract will include all activities for policies and security controls to comply with the Department of Education’s IT policies, the Federal Information Security Modernization Act, and the related authorizations required to operate a Federal data system (an Authority to Operate under NIST 800-53).

Other Contracts – Other contracts may be considered based on the results of all the market research conducted. For example, NCES is also considering one Psychometrics and Assessment (Survey Ops-PA) contract that will provide assessment support across all projects.

4. Questions The Government would like feedback from the community on this proposal before plans are implemented:

1. Previous contracts have incorporated design, monitoring, call center, information technology, and dissemination into one contract per content area (early childhood, high school, and postsecondary). What major risks are associated with separating these activities into separate contracts? Aside from the goals outlined in this RFI, what additional benefits do you see from proposed model?

2. The Government is contemplating an alternative model for the field operations contract described above (Survey Ops-CCF). Under this alternative model, the Design, Monitoring, and Dissemination (DMD) contractor would be responsible for field operations and the CCF contractor would be responsible for hiring and maintaining a pool of staff that the DMD contractor may hire from. This would allow field operations staff to maintain security clearances and obtain professional development training during periods between data collections. Which model is preferred? Why?

3. Are there other contract models that you would like to see the Government consider?

What work is your firm interested in?

4. Do you have any other feedback for the Government as options are evaluated?

5. Submission Instructions All interested parties are invited to submit formal responses in the RFI Response web form located at this URL:

https://forms.office.com/g/ZVuutskveA

Responses are due no later than 12:00 noon Eastern Time on October 15, 2024. The Government reserves the right to contact anyone responding to this RFI to clarify any of the responses provided in support of its market research.

6. Contact Information The contact information for this RFI is as follows:

Points of Contact

Name Role Title E-mail

Primary Point of Contact

Alyson Allman Contract Specialist alyson.allman@ed.gov

Secondary Point of Contact

Colin Alleyne Contracting Officer colin.alleyne@ed.gov https://forms.office.com/g/ZVuutskveA