AI-powered teacher evaluations
for Alabama educators.

Yes. All five ATOT dimensions and all 23 indicators are built in natively — Culture/Climate, Learning, Essentials, Agency, and Relationships — each with language across the four levels, the descriptive actions an observer watches for, and the distinctions that separate adjacent ratings. EvalScribe maps your evidence to the right indicators and drafts ratings and comments in the ATOT’s own vocabulary.

Not as the state system. The Alabama Quality Teaching Standards were the foundation of EDUCATEAlabama, and the State Board replaced them with the Alabama Core Teaching Standards. The Alabama Teacher Growth Program replaced EDUCATEAlabama in August 2022, and ALSDE states plainly that the ATOT does not align to the AQTS. The AQTS does still live on in educator preparation, in older district handbooks, and in some locally adopted observation instruments that were never rewritten — which is why EvalScribe still ships it, clearly labeled as legacy.

Because there are ten-plus years of AQTS and EDUCATEAlabama documents on the internet and about four years of ATGP documents, and a tool built on whatever its training data contained will confidently give you the older answer. It reads fine. It just describes a system Alabama retired. This is the same reason we’re specific about which instrument we’re built on — if a vendor can’t tell you, that’s the answer.

Culture/Climate (4 indicators) — the environment where each learner is cared for and safe to speak. Learning (6) — explanations, higher-order thinking, relevance, monitoring, adapting, feedback. Essentials (5) — content knowledge and confidence, high expectations, resources, active engagement, time management. Agency (5) — responsibility, choice, progress monitoring, perseverance, growth mindset. Relationships (3) — respectful interactions, collaboration, and dignity. All five dimensions are weighted equally.

They’re about reach. Very Evident (4) is more than 75% of learners, with the practice fully implemented and fully embedded. Evident (3) is 51 to 74%. Somewhat Evident (2) is about 25 to 50% — implemented, but not embedded. Not Evident (1) is fewer than 25%. This trips up evaluators coming from Danielson-derived instruments, where the top level describes teacher sophistication. In Alabama, a sophisticated practice that reaches a third of the room is a 2.

Implementation of Practices is how well the teacher carries the action out — quality, fidelity, rigor, and adjusting to learners’ cues. Authenticity of Practices is whether it’s embedded: familiar to the learners, regular rather than sporadic. Effect on Learners is whether it moved anyone. The ATOT form records one rating per indicator; these three are what you weigh to get there, and they can pull against each other.

No, and this matters. ALSDE says the ATOT is a formative observation tool only, that an LEA cannot use it as its sole evaluation instrument, that its results are not designed to drive employment decisions, and that its data should not be placed in personnel files. State reporting is aggregate; individual teachers are not reported. It’s still a write-up you have to produce for every classroom teacher every year, which is where EvalScribe helps — but anyone selling you a “defensible ATOT evaluation” is selling you something the state says doesn’t exist.

At least once per school year for every classroom teacher, though ALSDE recommends more — roughly one per semester. The observation window is 20 minutes. If a teacher is observed more than once, only the most recent ATOT counts toward the Effective Classroom Instruction Score.

It isn’t used for specialty roles — counselors, library media specialists, instructional coaches, or administrators. School administrators go through the APLDS leadership evaluation system instead, and district leaders use LEADAlabama.

Yes — that’s the third district option, and it’s common. Your LEA runs its own developed or adopted observation program alongside the one required ATOT, and ALSDE expects local models to align to the Alabama Core Teaching Standards. EvalScribe ships Danielson, Marzano, Stronge, CEL 5D+, NIET, and Kim Marshall alongside the state frameworks, plus the legacy AQTS. If yours reads differently, email [email protected] and we’ll take a look.

No. Alabama runs the ATOT through Cognia’s myJourney platform, and that stays yours. EvalScribe drafts the write-up — the ratings and the specific examples of practice observed — and you carry it into the platform and the feedback conversation. Worth noting: ALSDE never built the descriptive actions into the platform, so observers are told to hand teachers the examples separately. EvalScribe drafts feedback with that language in it.

No. The self-assessment is the teacher’s own reflection against the ten Alabama Core Teaching Standards, rated Initiating, Progressing, Accomplishing, or Excelling — it’s a teacher-side instrument, not an observer’s. The PLP is built collaboratively from multiple data sources. Both live in the state platform, and both stay with you.

No. Every rating is a draft you review, change, or discard. The evaluator’s professional judgment is the point of the ATOT — the manual says so directly, and it’s the reason the three factors exist rather than a formula. EvalScribe gets you to a defensible starting draft faster; it does not decide anything.

Generic AI tools have no built-in knowledge of the ATGP. They reach for the AQTS or EDUCATEAlabama because that’s what a decade of indexed documents taught them, map your notes onto Danielson domains that don’t exist in Alabama, read the top rating as “excellent teaching” instead of “more than 75% of learners,” have never heard of Implementation, Authenticity, and Effect on Learners, and will happily produce a “defensible evaluation” from a formative tool. EvalScribe is built around Alabama’s actual instrument and the evaluator workflow around it, from capture through final export.

Your notes are processed transiently on Microsoft Azure and are not retained on our servers. Evaluation records live locally on your device. Nothing is used to train public AI models. Given that ALSDE says ATOT data shouldn’t be placed in personnel files at all, where the record lives is not a small question. Districts needing a Data Processing Agreement or FERPA attestation can request one.

Start with the ATGP Orientation Manual from ALSDE, which contains the ATOT itself with sample descriptive actions, the rating guide, the ACTS self-assessment rubric, and the full Alabama Core Teaching Standards. The Alabama Core Teaching Standards are at Ala. Admin. Code r. 290-3-3-.03. The annual State Superintendent memo on Teaching Effectiveness sets each year’s district options and timeline. Everything on this page is drawn from those.