AI-powered teacher evaluations
for Arizona educators.
Cut evaluation documentation from hours to minutes. Arizona is a local-control state — your district chooses its own instrument — and most choose the Danielson Framework for Teaching. EvalScribe is built around it natively, on the Ineffective/Developing/Effective/Highly Effective scale Arizona districts use. Running something else? We probably support it, and if not, we’ll add it.
Saved per evaluation
All 22 Danielson components
To capture notes
Evaluator-controlled ratings
Three evaluations free — no credit card · Individual plans from $100/year · School & district licensing available
Endorsed by educational leaders
Game changer. Absolute game changer for school admin.
Tobin Davidson · Assistant Superintendent · 40+ years in education
This is amazing. I would pay lots of money for this. I’m serious — it’s crazy good.
Kittie Brown · Assistant Principal
Also endorsed by Dr. Robert Stinson · Glenn Brown · Angie Brandt — read full quotes ↓
Built by a classroom teacher
Founded by a practicing K–12 educator with nearly 20 years in the field.
Arizona-specific
All four Danielson domains and 22 components, on the scale Arizona districts use.
Privacy-first
Transient processing on Microsoft Azure. Never used for AI training.
Built for workflow
Designed around the realities of being an Arizona evaluator.
Arizona lets your district choose. Most choose Danielson.
Since 2019, Arizona has not required districts to use any single evaluation framework. The state moved to local control: each district adopts its own instrument, and the Department of Education keeps a repository of compliant options rather than mandating one. In practice, most Arizona districts land on the Danielson Framework for Teaching — and that is what EvalScribe is built around.
The Danielson Framework for Teaching
Four domains, 22 components. Two cover what happens in the room and two cover the work around it. EvalScribe ships the framework with the Ineffective / Developing / Effective / Highly Effective scale that Arizona districts, including the largest ones, apply to it.
Arizona has no mandated state framework — and that changes the question
Under ARS §15-537, districts choose. Some run the 2013 Danielson edition (Planning and Preparation, Classroom Environment, Instruction, Professional Responsibilities). Some run the newer 2022 Danielson edition (Planning and Preparation, Learning Environments, Learning Experiences, Principled Teaching). Some adopt the Arizona Professional Teaching Standards or one of the 50-plus instruments in the state repository. They are not interchangeable, and a tool that assumes one Arizona framework is guessing. EvalScribe ships Danielson because that is where districts cluster — and if yours runs something else, that is a conversation, not a dead end. See the note at the bottom of this section.
Four domains. Twenty-two components. Two are what you observe.
Planning & Preparation
6 components · Artifacts- 1a Knowledge of content and pedagogy
- 1b Knowledge of students
- 1c Setting instructional outcomes
- 1d Knowledge of resources
- 1e Designing coherent instruction
- 1f Designing student assessments
The Classroom Environment
5 components · Observed- 2a Environment of respect and rapportEvalScribe focus
- 2b Culture for learningEvalScribe focus
- 2c Managing classroom proceduresEvalScribe focus
- 2d Managing student behaviorEvalScribe focus
- 2e Organizing physical spaceEvalScribe focus
Instruction
5 components · Observed- 3a Communicating with studentsEvalScribe focus
- 3b Questioning and discussion techniquesEvalScribe focus
- 3c Engaging students in learningEvalScribe focus
- 3d Using assessment in instructionEvalScribe focus
- 3e Demonstrating flexibility and responsivenessEvalScribe focus
Professional Responsibilities
6 components · Artifacts- 4a Reflecting on teaching
- 4b Maintaining accurate records
- 4c Communicating with families
- 4d Participating in a professional community
- 4e Growing and developing professionally
- 4f Showing professionalism
Four levels — the scale Arizona districts actually apply.
Danielson’s published editions use Unsatisfactory / Basic / Proficient / Distinguished. Arizona districts overwhelmingly relabel to the four levels below, which ARS §15-537 built into the state’s performance-classification language. EvalScribe ships this scale by default.
Ineffective
Little or no implementation of the standard; teaching that does not convey understanding of the underlying concepts, or does harm.Developing
Basic knowledge and implementation; the skills are there but applied inconsistently.Effective
Consistent, skilled, professional practice. Most experienced teachers frequently perform here.Highly Effective
Knowledge, implementation, and integration, with leadership and mentorship. Master teachers who build a community of learners.Where the evidence comes from — and where we focus.
Danielson splits cleanly, and Arizona district handbooks say so directly: Domains 2 and 3 are gathered primarily through observation; Domains 1 and 4 through artifacts the teacher provides. EvalScribe builds for the observation domains and is candid about the rest.
How EvalScribe handles Arizona
The Danielson Framework is built in with all four domains and all 22 components, each with language across the four levels, the look-fors an observer watches for, and the distinctions that separate adjacent ratings. EvalScribe draws the Developing/Effective line and the Effective/Highly Effective line where Danielson draws them — the move from compliance to engagement, and the move from teacher-directed practice to student-directed learning. It drafts in the framework’s own vocabulary on the Ineffective/Developing/Effective/Highly Effective scale Arizona districts use.
Honest scope — we focus on the observation domains. EvalScribe drafts Domains 2 and 3, the ten components an observation actually reaches. Domains 1 and 4 are built from artifacts the teacher provides and reviews with the evaluator — lesson plans, records, communication logs, professional growth evidence — so they aren’t a tool’s call to make from a classroom visit. You can capture those artifacts with Smart Scan and draft from them, but the observation is where EvalScribe earns its keep.
Your district runs something else? That’s not a dead end. Arizona’s repository holds more than fifty compliant instruments, and districts split across the 2013 Danielson edition, the 2022 edition, the Arizona Professional Teaching Standards, and locally built rubrics. EvalScribe already ships Danielson (both editions’ structure), Marzano, Stronge, CEL 5D+, NIET, and Kim Marshall, which covers most of what Arizona districts adopt. If yours reads differently, email [email protected] — telling us your instrument is how it gets added. District leaders can see how a full rollout works at evalscribe.com/district.
How EvalScribe works with Arizona’s frameworks.
A five-step path from the back of the classroom to a finished, standards-aligned evaluation.
Observe the classroom
Formal observation or walkthrough — capture what you see the way you always have.
Enter notes your way
Type, dictate, or snap a photo of your handwritten notes. Smart Scan converts handwriting to text.
Map evidence to components
EvalScribe identifies which Framework components each note supports, across all four domains.
Suggested ratings & comments
Get draft component-level ratings and feedback in the Framework's own voice, across the four-level scale.
Review & finalize
Edit anything you want, finalize the evaluation, and export a clean PDF to carry into the post-observation conference.
EvalScribe runs natively on iPhone, iPad, and Mac — write up the drop-in before you’ve walked back to the office.
Capture notes the way you already work.
No retraining required. Whatever your walkthrough style, EvalScribe accepts it.
Snap a photo
Photograph your handwritten notes mid-walkthrough. Smart Scan OCR converts handwriting to text — even messy handwriting, even pedagogical terms.
Dictate as you go
Speak observations directly into the app. Voice dictation captures what you saw without breaking your eye contact with the classroom.
Type directly
Prefer to type? Enter notes straight into the app — they flow into the same standards-aware drafting pipeline as scans and dictation.
Why generic AI falls short in Arizona.
Ask a general-purpose chatbot how Arizona evaluates teachers and it will invent a single state framework. Arizona doesn’t have one. It will reach for the wrong Danielson edition, the wrong scale, and Domains it can’t see from your notes.
| Capability | Generic AI (ChatGPT, Claude, etc.) | EvalScribe |
|---|---|---|
| Local control | ✕Assumes Arizona has one mandated state framework and answers as if every district uses it. | ✓Built for the reality: districts choose, most choose Danielson, and the ones that don’t have a path to support. |
| The right edition | ✕Blends the 2013 and 2022 Danielson editions, mixing domain names that never appear together. | ✓Knows the 2013 and 2022 structures are different instruments and keeps them straight. |
| The right scale | ✕Defaults to Danielson’s Unsatisfactory/Basic/Proficient/Distinguished, which most Arizona districts don’t use. | ✓Ships the Ineffective/Developing/Effective/Highly Effective scale Arizona districts actually apply. |
| Observed vs. artifact | ✕Will invent Domain 1 and 4 ratings from a classroom observation, where that evidence doesn’t exist. | ✓Drafts Domains 2 and 3 from the observation and is candid that 1 and 4 come from teacher artifacts. |
| The Developing/Effective line | ✕Rates on vibes, missing that the line is compliance versus genuine engagement. | ✓Draws the distinction where Danielson draws it, component by component. |
| The Effective/Highly Effective line | ✕Hands out the top rating for strong teaching. | ✓Holds Highly Effective to the bar: student-directed learning and teacher leadership, not just polished delivery. |
| Your district’s instrument | ✕Can’t tell you which of 50-plus Arizona instruments yours is, or adapt when it’s wrong. | ✓Ships the common frameworks and adds yours on request — telling us is how it gets built. |
How much Arizona evaluation time could you reclaim?
Tune the inputs to your reality. The numbers update as you go.
You could reclaim approximately
hours per year
Workdays reclaimed
Total evaluations
Based on early EvalScribe users saving an average of 35 minutes per evaluation. Individual results may vary based on your current workflow. The state model recommends two formal and four informal observations a year for every probationary teacher, and one formal plus four informal for everyone else — which is why the default here is five, not two.
The best way to see it
is to watch it.
Reading about how EvalScribe drafts an evaluation isn't the same as watching it happen. The demo walks through a real observation — capture, mapping, scoring, and final export — start to finish.
The draft review screen — every comment, rating, and piece of mapped evidence is fully editable before export.
See an example EvalScribe report.
A real EvalScribe-generated evaluation, formatted exactly as it exports from the app. The workflow is the same across frameworks — useful to share with district stakeholders.
Download sample PDFWhat educational leaders are saying.
Real feedback from administrators across roles — from academic coaches to assistant superintendents.
EvalScribe is a tool that every public school principal should use. This resource literally makes multiple people out of administrators, allowing them to focus their energies on precise observation analysis and quality feedback while leaving EvalScribe to handle the mechanics. This tool will remove virtually all of the drudgery from the classroom evaluation process and would represent an excellent use of school funds.
Dr. Robert Stinson
Principal
After seeing a detailed demonstration of EvalScribe, I came away very impressed with both the concept and the execution. The platform provides administrators with a practical way to quickly capture classroom observations and generate high-quality, customized feedback that remains aligned to their evaluation framework and local expectations. What stood out most was the balance between efficiency and quality. EvalScribe has the potential to reduce administrative workload while helping school leaders provide more timely and meaningful feedback to teachers — a tool with considerable promise for schools and districts.
Glenn Brown
Director of Student Services
Game changer. Absolute game changer for school admin.
Tobin Davidson
Assistant Superintendent · 40+ years in education
This is amazing. I would pay lots of money for this. I’m serious — it’s crazy good. I look forward to using it on a regular basis next year.
Kittie Brown
Assistant Principal
Evaluators spend an inordinate amount of time recording and documenting evaluations. This app is easy to use, affordable, and incredibly efficient. It cuts the time spent recording and documenting evaluations down significantly and frees us up to handle other aspects of the job. Plus, the conference suggestions save on prep time when a conference is warranted.
Angie Brandt
Academic Coach
Built by educators, for educators.
EvalScribe was co-founded by a practicing classroom teacher and his wife — a husband-and-wife team with thirty years of combined classroom and business experience.
Anthony Neely, Ph.D.
Co-founder · Product
A tenured K–12 classroom teacher and Professional Learning Lead. District Teacher of the Year, with nearly 20 years in education and three published books.
Andrea Neely, Ph.D.
Co-founder · Business
Associate Professor of Management. Research and teaching in organizational management.
Your evaluation data stays yours.
Observation notes are processed transiently on Microsoft Azure and are not retained on our servers. Your evaluation records live locally on your device. Notes and evaluations are never used to train public AI models — which matters whichever instrument your district runs and wherever your evaluation records ultimately live. For districts needing a Data Processing Agreement or FERPA attestation, those are available on request.
Leading a district evaluation rollout?
Arizona hands the whole decision to your district — which framework, which Danielson edition, which components, how student data weighs in, and how you keep ratings consistent across every evaluator. That’s a lot of local choices to standardize, and it’s exactly where a district rollout earns its keep. See how EvalScribe deploys across a district, how access codes work, and what a Data Processing Agreement looks like.
Simple, transparent pricing.
Try EvalScribe with three free evaluations. When you're ready to keep going, pick the plan that fits your role.
Individual
For a single evaluator on their own device.
Billed annually per user
- Unlimited evaluations
- All supported frameworks, including the Arizona Framework
- iOS & macOS access
- 3 free evaluations to start
School-wide
For a school with multiple evaluators.
3+ evaluators
- Everything in Individual
- 10% volume discount
- Unique access code issued to your school
- Easy distribution to your evaluators
District-wide
For districts deploying across every evaluator.
Best value for full deployments
- Everything in School-wide
- 20% volume discount
- Single access code for the entire district
- Direct support contact for rollout
All pricing shown is introductory and may change. For school and district plans, EvalScribe issues a unique access code that the buyer distributes to their evaluators. District leaders can find the full rollout picture at evalscribe.com/district.
Arizona’s frameworks & EvalScribe — common questions.
Does Arizona have a state teacher evaluation framework?
Not a mandated one. Since 2019, changes to ARS §15-537, §15-341, and §15-189.06 mean districts are no longer required to align to the Arizona Framework for Measuring Educator Effectiveness. Arizona is a local-control state: each district adopts its own instrument, and the Department of Education maintains a repository of compliant options rather than requiring any single one. The Arizona Professional Teaching Standards are the state model instrument, offered as one choice among many.
Which framework does EvalScribe use for Arizona?
The Danielson Framework for Teaching, because that is what most Arizona districts choose. It’s built in with all four domains and all 22 components, on the Ineffective/Developing/Effective/Highly Effective scale Arizona districts apply. If your district uses a different instrument, EvalScribe ships several others and will add yours — see below.
My district uses a different framework. Can EvalScribe still help?
Very likely yes. Arizona’s repository holds more than fifty compliant instruments, and EvalScribe already ships Danielson (2013 and 2022 structures), Marzano, Stronge, CEL 5D+, NIET, and Kim Marshall — which covers most of what Arizona districts adopt. If yours reads differently, email [email protected]. Telling us your instrument is how it gets added.
Which Danielson edition does EvalScribe use?
EvalScribe supports both the 2013 and 2022 structures, because Arizona districts split between them. The 2013 edition uses Planning and Preparation, Classroom Environment, Instruction, and Professional Responsibilities. The 2022 edition uses Planning and Preparation, Learning Environments, Learning Experiences, and Principled Teaching. They are not interchangeable, and picking the wrong one produces ratings against components your district doesn’t use. If you’re not sure which your district runs, your evaluation handbook will say.
What scale does EvalScribe use for Arizona?
Ineffective, Developing, Effective, and Highly Effective. Danielson’s own editions publish Unsatisfactory/Basic/Proficient/Distinguished, but Arizona districts — including the largest ones — overwhelmingly relabel to the four levels tied to the state’s performance-classification language under ARS §15-537. EvalScribe ships that scale by default.
Which components does EvalScribe draft?
The observation domains — Domain 2 (The Classroom Environment) and Domain 3 (Instruction), which is ten components. Arizona district handbooks are explicit that these are gathered primarily through classroom observation. Domains 1 and 4 are built from artifacts the teacher provides — lesson plans, records, communication logs, reflection — and reviewed by the evaluator, so EvalScribe supports capturing those but focuses its drafting where the observation actually reaches.
How many observations does Arizona require?
Under ARS §15-537, teachers get at least two observations. District practice varies within that: probationary teachers are typically evaluated on all four domains across a fall and spring cycle, while experienced continuing teachers rated Effective or Highly Effective may be observed on Domains 2 and 3 only, and a second observation may be waived. Highly Effective teachers may qualify for an alternative evaluation cycle after three consecutive years. Your district handbook sets the specifics.
What’s the difference between Effective and Highly Effective?
Roughly, who is driving the learning. Effective is consistent, skilled, professional practice — the level most experienced teachers frequently reach. Highly Effective adds integration, leadership, and mentorship: student-directed learning, a genuine community of learners, and influence beyond the teacher’s own classroom. A polished teacher-directed lesson is Effective. The move to Highly Effective is the move from the teacher doing the work well to students owning it.
Does EvalScribe assign the rating?
No. Every rating is a draft you accept, change, or discard. EvalScribe maps your evidence to the right components and drafts a best-fit rating with the language behind it, so you start from a defensible draft instead of a blank form. The judgment stays yours.
How is EvalScribe different from ChatGPT or Claude?
A general-purpose chatbot doesn’t know Arizona is local control, so it invents a single state framework. It blends Danielson editions, defaults to a scale Arizona districts don’t use, and will happily rate Domains 1 and 4 from a lesson it never saw. EvalScribe is built around the framework Arizona districts actually use, on the scale they actually apply, focused on the domains an observation actually reaches.
Is observation data stored?
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. Districts needing a Data Processing Agreement or FERPA attestation can request one.
Where can I read the official Arizona sources?
Start with ARS §15-537 for the evaluation requirements, and the Arizona Department of Education’s Teacher/Principal Evaluation page for the local-control changes and the state model instruments. Your own district’s evaluation handbook is the authority for which framework, which edition, and which scale you’re rated on — in a local-control state, that document matters more than any statewide page.
Spend less time on paperwork.
Lead your building.
EvalScribe was built to help Arizona evaluators spend less time documenting evaluations and more time doing what matters: leading instruction, coaching teachers, and walking buildings.
Three evaluations free — no credit card · Available on iPhone, iPad, and Mac