Alternate Assessment

The State of South Dakota Department of Education is requesting proposals for professional services to develop and administer statewide summative alternate assessments for students with significant cognitive disabilities in English Language Arts, Math, and Science, with proposals due August 15, 2026 at 5:00 p.m. CST. A Letter of Intent is due June 30, 2026, and written questions are due July 10, 2026.

The scope includes developing alternate academic achievement standards in ELA and Math; developing, administering, and scoring test items across all three subjects; operating an assessment administration platform; generating real-time reporting systems and technical reports; and conducting standard-setting activities. Offerors must submit cost proposals for each of three hosting options: vendor-hosted, state on-premises, or state cloud-hosted. All deliverables must comply with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 Level AA, integrate with the State's OAuth 2.0 single sign-on service, and prohibit hardware or software manufactured by Huawei, Nuctech, or ZTE. Vendors must meet stringent IT requirements including multifactor authentication for administrative users, AES-256 encryption with SHA-256 hashing, vulnerability scanning, NIST 800-88 data sanitization standards, seven-year access logs, and twelve-hour security incident notification. The State retains all intellectual property rights to assessments, reports, software, and technical data.

The contract term runs September 1, 2026 through August 30, 2031 (five years), with State option to renew for three additional one-year periods. Evaluation weights cost at 20 points; experience and qualifications at 25 points; available resources at 15 points; past performance at 10 points; availability and familiarity with project locale at 5 points; project management techniques at 15 points; and ability to handle special project constraints at 10 points (100-point maximum). Mandatory approval by the State's Bureau of Information and Technology is separate from scoring. The State reserves the right to reject all proposals, negotiate with multiple offerors, request best and final offers, and divide services among multiple contractors. Vendors must provide cyber liability insurance at $1 million, professional liability insurance at $1 million, and comply with Executive Order 2023-02 Prohibited Entity certification excluding contractors ultimately owned or controlled by foreign nationals or governments of China, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Cuba, or Venezuela. Questions and answers will be distributed by July 31, 2026 to all offerors that submitted Letters of Intent, questions, or requested Q&A via email.