AI-powered teacher evaluations
for 5D+ schools.
Cut evaluation documentation from hours to minutes. EvalScribe is built around the CEL 5D+ Teacher Evaluation Rubric natively — its five dimensions and the Unsatisfactory to Distinguished scale, in the framework's own language.
Saved per evaluation
The 5D+ framework, built in
Unsatisfactory to Distinguished
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.
5D+-specific
All five 5D+ dimensions and the four-level scale, built in natively.
Privacy-first
Transient processing on Microsoft Azure. Never used for AI training.
Built for workflow
Designed around the realities of evaluating with the 5D+ rubric.
The CEL 5D+ rubric. EvalScribe is built around all five dimensions.
Developed by the University of Washington Center for Educational Leadership, the 5D+ Teacher Evaluation Rubric is a growth-oriented instrument built on the 5 Dimensions of Teaching and Learning. It organizes practice into five dimensions and thirteen subdimensions, scored on a four-level scale from Unsatisfactory to Distinguished. EvalScribe is built around the framework's own structure and language.
CEL 5D+ Teacher Evaluation Rubric
The 5D+ rubric draws on research about the core elements of quality instruction, grouped into five dimensions and thirteen subdimensions. What sets it apart is its focus on the role of students: across the four levels, the emphasis shifts from what the teacher does toward what students do, so that the highest level describes students taking ownership of their own learning. EvalScribe maps your observation notes to the dimension they support and drafts a rating and evidence-anchored feedback in the framework's own language.
Five dimensions.
Purpose
Whether the lesson's learning target is clear, standards-based, and connected to broader purpose and transferable skills.
Student Engagement
Whether students take ownership of their learning through quality questioning, substantive student talk, and meaningful participation.
Curriculum & Pedagogy
Whether materials, tasks, content knowledge, discipline-specific approaches, and scaffolds are aligned and rigorous.
Assessment for Student Learning
Whether formative assessment is used well, by both students and teacher, to guide learning over time.
Classroom Environment & Culture
Whether the classroom's routines, norms, relationships, and physical environment support learning for every student.
The "+": Professional Collaboration and Communication
The five dimensions describe classroom instruction. The "+" in 5D+ adds Professional Collaboration and Communication — the practice teachers engage in outside the classroom, including collaboration with peers and administrators, communication with families, and support of school, district, and state initiatives. EvalScribe supports this area alongside the five instructional dimensions.
The four 5D+ ratings.
Unsatisfactory
Basic
Proficient
Effective practiceDistinguished
At Proficient, effective practice is consistently present and students participate meaningfully. The distinctive feature of 5D+ is what changes across the levels: at Distinguished, students assume ownership, contribute to one another's learning, and demonstrate independence and agency. EvalScribe drafts to each level's own criteria.
How EvalScribe handles the 5D+ rubric
The five dimensions, the professional collaboration area, and the four-level scale are built into the tool, with the shift toward student ownership that separates the levels. EvalScribe maps the evidence from your observation notes to the dimension it supports and drafts best-fit ratings and evidence-anchored feedback in the framework's own language — so the write-up is defensible, traceable back to what you observed, and ready to inform the evaluation.
Scope of the score. EvalScribe drafts the observation-based write-up. Any student-growth measures and the overall summative rating are determined by your district, not the app.
An independent tool. EvalScribe is not affiliated with or endorsed by the University of Washington Center for Educational Leadership. 5D, 5D+, and 5 Dimensions of Teaching and Learning are trademarks of UW CEL. EvalScribe references the framework's structure so administrators who already use it can draft and organize observations; it does not reproduce the official rubric. If your district uses a specific version, tell us at [email protected].
How EvalScribe works with the 5D+ rubric.
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 dimensions
EvalScribe identifies which of the five 5D+ dimensions each note supports, down to the subdimension.
Suggested ratings & comments
Get draft ratings and feedback language in the rubric's own voice, across the four-level scale.
Review & finalize
Edit anything you want, finalize the evaluation, and export a clean PDF for your records.
EvalScribe runs natively on iPhone, iPad, and Mac — work where you are.
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 DC-aware drafting pipeline as scans and dictation.
Why generic AI falls short for the 5D+ rubric.
Pasting your walkthrough notes into a general-purpose chatbot might produce a paragraph that sounds polished — but for 5D+ documentation, "sounds polished" isn't the bar. Defensible, dimension-aligned evaluations are.
| Capability | Generic AI (ChatGPT, Claude, etc.) | EvalScribe |
|---|---|---|
| Framework awareness | ✕No concept of the 5D+ rubric, its five dimensions, or its four-level scale. Treats every prompt the same. | ✓Built around the 5D+ rubric's actual dimensions, subdimension structure, and four-level scale. |
| Dimension mapping | ✕Invents dimension and subdimension labels that don't match the 5D+ framework. | ✓Maps evidence to the real five 5D+ dimensions using the actual framework loaded into the app. |
| Role of students | ✕Misses that 5D+ scores the shift toward students taking ownership across the levels. | ✓Drafts to the model's logic — Distinguished describes students assuming ownership, not just a better teacher. |
| The Proficient standard | ✕Treats the scale as generic good-to-bad, missing that Proficient — not Distinguished — is effective practice. | ✓Drafts to the real 5D+ bar — Proficient is consistent effective practice; Distinguished requires student ownership. |
| The "+" area | ✕Ignores the professional collaboration and communication that lives outside classroom instruction. | ✓Supports Professional Collaboration and Communication alongside the five instructional dimensions. |
| Note input | ✕Requires you to retype everything before the AI can do anything with it. | ✓Accepts typed notes, dictation, or photos of handwritten notes via Smart Scan OCR. |
| Feedback language | ✕Vague, generic comments that could describe any teacher. | ✓Professional, evidence-anchored feedback written in the language of the 5D+ rubric. |
| Data privacy | ✕Free tiers may use your inputs to train public models. | ✓Enterprise-grade Microsoft Azure. Transient processing. Zero retention. Never used for training. |
| Defensibility | ✕Output you can't trace back to evidence or rubric language. | ✓Every comment is tied to evidence pulled from your notes and the component it supports. |
How much 5D+ 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 best way to see it
is to watch it.
Reading about how EvalScribe drafts a 5D+ 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. For districts needing a Data Processing Agreement or FERPA attestation, those are available on request.
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 CEL 5D+ rubric
- 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.
The 5D+ rubric & EvalScribe — common questions.
Does EvalScribe support the CEL 5D+ rubric?
Yes. EvalScribe is built around the 5D+ Teacher Evaluation Rubric — all five dimensions, the professional collaboration area, and the four-level scale. It maps your observation evidence to the dimension it supports and drafts a rating and feedback in the framework's own language, from Unsatisfactory to Distinguished.
What are the five dimensions of the 5D+ rubric?
Purpose, Student Engagement, Curriculum & Pedagogy, Assessment for Student Learning, and Classroom Environment & Culture. These five dimensions are divided into thirteen subdimensions and describe classroom instruction.
What does the "+" in 5D+ mean?
The five dimensions cover classroom instruction. The "+" adds Professional Collaboration and Communication — the practice teachers engage in outside the classroom, such as collaborating with peers, communicating with families, and supporting school and district initiatives. EvalScribe supports this area too.
What are the 5D+ rating levels?
Unsatisfactory, Basic, Proficient, and Distinguished. Proficient is effective, consistently present practice. What makes 5D+ distinctive is that the role of students increases across the levels — at Distinguished, students take ownership of their own learning, not just the teacher.
Is EvalScribe affiliated with the UW Center for Educational Leadership?
No. The 5D+ rubric is developed and owned by the University of Washington Center for Educational Leadership, and 5D and 5D+ are its trademarks. EvalScribe is an independent drafting tool that supports administrators who already use the framework; it references the framework's structure for compatibility and does not replace your district's official scoring platform.
Does EvalScribe replace evaluator judgment?
No. EvalScribe drafts evidence-mapped evaluations and suggested ratings. The evaluator reviews, edits, and finalizes every document. The professional judgment is always yours — EvalScribe just removes the typing.
Can the generated evaluations be edited?
Yes, fully. Every comment, every rating, and every piece of mapped evidence inside a draft evaluation can be edited before you export the final PDF. You are always the last set of eyes on the document.
Is observation data stored?
Your notes are processed transiently on Microsoft Azure and are not retained on EvalScribe's servers. Your evaluation records sit locally on your device under a local-first architecture. Your data is never used to train public AI models. For more detail, see our Privacy Policy.
How is EvalScribe different from ChatGPT or Claude?
Generic AI tools have no built-in understanding of the 5D+ rubric. They invent dimensions and subdimensions, miss the shift toward student ownership across the levels, hand out Distinguished freely, and produce vague comments that miss the distinctions the framework requires. EvalScribe is built around the 5D+ rubric's actual dimensions and four-level scale — and the evaluator workflow that surrounds it — from capture through final export.
Where can I read the official 5D+ sources?
The 5D framework and 5D+ rubric are published by the University of Washington Center for Educational Leadership. Districts that have adopted it also post their implementation guides and version details; the rubric itself is licensed by UW CEL.
Which other frameworks are supported?
EvalScribe ships with frameworks from all 50 states and Washington D.C., plus general models such as Danielson, Marzano, Stronge, CEL 5D+, NIET, and Kim Marshall. The complete list is available at evalscribe.com/frameworks.
Don't see your question? Reach out via our contact page — we read every message personally.
Spend less time on paperwork.
Lead your building.
EvalScribe was built to help administrators spend less time documenting 5D+ 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