Title I, Part A, of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), as amended by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (P.L. 107-110), provides Federal financial assistance to Local Educational Agencies (LEAs) to ensure that all children have fair, equal, and significant opportunities in obtaining high-quality education and reach, at a minimum, proficiency on challenging State academic achievement standards and State academic assessments. Accordingly, Sec. 1120 of the ESEA requires each participating LEA to provide Title I services to eligible private school children, their teachers, and their families. These services must be equitable to those provided by each LEA to public school children, their teachers, and their families. If an LEA is prohibited by law from providing equitable services to private school children in accordance with Sec. 1120 of the ESEA or if the U.S. Secretary of Education determines that an LEA has substantially failed or is unwilling to provide such services to private school children, that LEA is "bypassed." The Security of Education has waived this requirement to date for 57 LEAs in the State of Missouri and 14 LEAs in Virginia and has arranged for third parties under contracts with the U.S. Department of Education (ED) to provide these required services. The Department of Education will be awarding two separate contracts (one award for Missouri LEA services and one contract for Virginia LEA services) however, parties responding to this Request for Information (RFI) must be aware of their duties for assuming the LEA's responsibility in meeting all statuatory and regulatory requirements for providing equitable services. At a minimum, the contractor shall have the capacity to: * Conduct timely and applicable consultation with appropriate private school officials prior to making any decisions; * Collect poverty data using scientifically-based research methods allowed under Sec. 1120 of NCLB; * Determine the amount of funds generated by low-income private school children that will be used to provide instruction by each private school; * Decide whether or not to combine available funding (see B-17 on page 16 of the Guidance); * Determine the multiple, educationally related, objective criteria used to select eligible children (see Sec. 1115 (b) of NCLB): * Select for services children most at-risk of failing who live in participating public school attendance areas; * Determine the educational need of participants based on the collected student data; * Design and implement scientifically-researched based curricula and instructional programs that meet the needs of participants and are coordinated with instruction occurring in the regular classrooms; * Assess the annual progress of the Title I programs toward meeting standards established in consultation; * Revise Title I services to meet goals as described in the initial consultation with private school officials if progress is not being made; * Provide instruction by teachers who meet the specified State's definition of "highly qualified teacher"; * Compensate teachers (salaries and benefits) at a rate equal to the schedules for public school teachers in the LEA where the program is located; * Provide private school teachers of participants and contractor teachers with professional development activities to provide the necessary knowledge and skills in better serving the participants; and * Provide parent of participants with parent involvement activities (see Sec 1118 of NCLB). All interested parties are encouraged to respond to this RFI with a brief capability statement outlining the necessary knowlede, skills and abilities in meeting Department of Education requirements by January 3, 2007 - 2:00 p.m. EST. All questions and comments must be directed to Thurl Frazier, Contract Specialist at
[email protected] and cc Sylvia Reid, Contracting Officer at
[email protected]. Resources available to interested parties: NCLB: http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/pg2.html Regulations: http://www.ed.gov/legislation/FedRegister/finrule/2002-4/120202a.html Guidance: http://www.ed.gov/programs/titleiparta/psguidance.doc Title I Tool Kit: http:/www.ed.gov/programs/titleiparta/ps/titleitoolkit.pdf