STC career ready assessment services

The State of South Carolina, through the Department of Education (SCDE) and Department of Employment and Workforce (SCDEW), is seeking a contractor to provide comprehensive career readiness assessment services via a statewide term contract. The procurement will support administering, scoring, and reporting career readiness assessments for approximately 80,000 individuals annually, including 50,000 eleventh-grade students, 49,000 twelfth-grade students, and 20,000 workforce development participants. The assessment must measure soft skills, work habits, and employability skills, with delivery options in both online (25%) and paper (75%) formats. Key deliverables include individual student reports, printed certificates, technical reports for agencies, and an interactive reporting system. Evaluation criteria will be weighted across four categories: Price/Business Proposal (25 points), Technical Proposal (20 points), Qualifications (20 points), and Program Management Plan (15 points), totaling 100 points. The solicitation timeline includes a pre-proposal conference on October 25, 2021, at 1:00 PM via Microsoft Teams, with questions due by November 3, 2021, at 10:00 AM. Proposals are due online by November 15, 2021, at 11:00 AM, with an anticipated award on December 11, 2021, and a contract period from December 23, 2021, to December 22, 2026, including an initial one-year term and four optional one-year renewals.

The procurement does not specify specific set-aside designations or restrictions for disadvantaged enterprises. The contractor must comply with federal regulations including IDEA, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and FERPA, and provide accommodations for students with disabilities and multilingual learners. The contract requires comprehensive insurance coverage, including $1,000,000 general liability, $5,000,000 cyber liability, and workers' compensation. An administrative services fee of 1 percent of total contract sales must be remitted quarterly to Procurement Services. While no specific incumbent vendor is mentioned, the contract will reimburse SCDE districts for testing costs after receiving final data files, with SCDEW and other governmental units to be invoiced for actual usage. The solicitation assumes 80,000 annual administrations for pricing purposes, with the contractor responsible for maintaining test security, data integrity, and providing help desk support during business hours. Pricing must be submitted on a per-student basis via an Excel spreadsheet, with all costs included and broken out by fiscal year.