IAM, ILEARN and IREAD AssessmentsBid Documents

The Indiana Department of Administration, on behalf of the Indiana Department of Education, is procuring a single contractor to develop, administer, score, and report three statewide assessments: ILEARN, IREAD, and Indiana's Alternate Measure (I AM), for school years 2027-2028 through 2032-2033, with an option for one additional one-year extension. The contractor must deliver all three assessments on an integrated online platform while maintaining comparable paper accommodations for fewer than 1% of students, managing approximately 83,000 ILEARN students annually, 70,000-120,000 IREAD students depending on the administration cycle, and 900 I AM students per grade level. Deliverables include developing approximately 1,024 new items and 77 passages for I AM in the first contract year, providing ongoing item development for ILEARN and IREAD, establishing API connections to intervention providers, implementing through-year assessment delivery with computer-adaptive testing without item repetition, creating comprehensive dynamic reporting systems for families and educators, maintaining a released items repository, and conducting cut score validations using Principled Assessment Design research models. Critical non-negotiable requirements include establishing a dedicated full-time Program Director with five years of high-stakes assessment experience, implementing quality assurance protocols, providing 07:00-19:00 EST/EDT help desk support, conducting annual Technical Advisory Committee presentations, supporting third-party data forensics and replication analyses, and maintaining compliance with FERPA, WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standards, and Indiana Office of Technology security standards. Evaluation criteria include management quality and capability (50 points), cost (30 points), Buy Indiana Initiative status (5 points), and diversity subcontractor commitments (15 points with potential bonus opportunities, for a maximum of 103 points). The pre-proposal conference is scheduled for April 29, 2026, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Eastern Time in Indianapolis; written questions must be submitted by May 4, 2026, at 3:00 p.m. ET with responses provided by May 8, 2026; and proposals are due June 22, 2026, at 3:00 p.m. ET through the Supplier Portal. The State anticipates award recommendation in September 2026, with proposal discussions and oral presentations potentially occurring in July or August 2026 and Best and Final Offers requested in August 2026.

The solicitation establishes subcontracting goals of 8% Minority Business Enterprise participation, 11% Women Business Enterprise participation, and 3% Indiana Veteran Owned Small Business participation, with respondents required to submit completed MWBE, WBE, and IVOSB commitment forms demonstrating engagement with certified firms throughout the contract term. All proposed subcontractors must be listed on the State of Indiana Certified M/W/IVOSB database as of the proposal due date, and each firm may serve only one classification designation. The current vendor, Cambium Assessment, Inc. (CAI), provides existing item banks and must transition all data, materials, and results to the selected contractor through a coordinated transition plan including data migration strategies and results verification testing. Respondents must demonstrate prior experience serving multiple states in large-stakes summative assessment administration, provide documented system uptime and outage information from the previous five years, submit recent audited financial statements or Dunn & Bradstreet reports, and furnish three client references from similar-sized contracts with direct submission to idoareferences@idoa.in.gov by the proposal due date. The RFP does not specify a total contract value or budget range; however, pricing must be firm, all-inclusive, non-negotiable, and submitted on a per-assessment fee basis for each of the six contract years, with pricing remaining open for a minimum of 180 days from award issuance. Respondents are encouraged to extend pricing to other governmental bodies at the same rates negotiated with the State, and all proposals must comply with Indiana's cloud service standards for Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) engagements as applicable.