AI-powered teacher evaluations
for 5D+ schools.
Cut evaluation documentation from hours to minutes. EvalScribe supports administrators who use the CEL 5D+ Teacher Evaluation Rubric. You bring your district's rubric and your judgment. EvalScribe helps you write it up.
Saved per evaluation
Organize your evidence by dimension
Unsatisfactory to Distinguished
Evaluator-controlled ratings
Three evaluations free — no credit card · Individual plans from $100/year · School & district licensing available
Educational leaders on EvalScribe
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 from 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.
Made for 5D+ users
Works with schools and districts that use the CEL 5D+ rubric.
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 supports administrators who use it.
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 is organized into five dimensions and scored on a four-level scale from Unsatisfactory to Distinguished. EvalScribe works with schools and districts that already use it.
CEL 5D+ Teacher Evaluation Rubric
The 5D+ rubric is used by schools and districts for instructional growth and teacher evaluation. EvalScribe helps administrators who already use it organize observation notes by dimension and draft the write-up. You apply the rubric your district has adopted, and you make every rating.
The five dimensions.
Purpose
Student Engagement
Curriculum & Pedagogy
Assessment for Student Learning
Classroom Environment & Culture
The "+": Professional Collaboration and Communication
The 5D+ rubric adds Professional Collaboration and Communication to the five instructional dimensions. Administrators who document this area alongside the five dimensions can organize that evidence in EvalScribe as well.
The four 5D+ ratings.
Unsatisfactory
Basic
Proficient
Distinguished
What each level means comes from your district's 5D+ documentation. EvalScribe offers suggested draft ratings for your review. You decide every rating.
How EvalScribe works with the 5D+ rubric
EvalScribe supports administrators who use the 5D+ rubric. It organizes your observation evidence by the dimensions your district evaluates against, offers suggested draft ratings for your review, and helps you write evidence-anchored feedback you can align to your district's documentation. You bring your district's rubric and your judgment. EvalScribe helps you write it up.
Scope of the score. EvalScribe helps with 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. Questions about your district's setup? Email [email protected].
How EvalScribe works with the 5D+ rubric.
A five-step path from the back of the classroom to a finished 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.
Organize evidence by dimension
EvalScribe helps you sort each note by the 5D+ dimension it relates to.
Suggested ratings & comments
Get suggested ratings for your review and feedback language you can align to your district's documentation.
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 drafting process 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 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. | ✓Works with schools and districts that use the CEL 5D+ rubric. You apply your district's rubric, and EvalScribe helps you write it up. |
| Organizing evidence | ✕Invents dimension and subdimension labels that don't match the 5D+ framework. | ✓Organizes your evidence by 5D+ dimension so it is ready to hold up against your district's rubric. |
| The "+" area | ✕Ignores the professional collaboration and communication that lives outside classroom instruction. | ✓Lets you organize evidence for Professional Collaboration and Communication alongside the five 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 you can align to your district's 5D+ documentation. |
| 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 dimension it relates to. |
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, from capture and organizing evidence to suggested ratings and final export.
The draft review screen — every comment, rating, and piece of organized 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
- Works with every state and national framework, 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 works with administrators who use the 5D+ Teacher Evaluation Rubric. It organizes your observation evidence by dimension, suggests draft ratings for your review, and helps you write feedback you can align to your district's documentation. The ratings are yours.
What are the five dimensions of the 5D+ rubric?
Purpose, Student Engagement, Curriculum & Pedagogy, Assessment for Student Learning, and Classroom Environment & Culture. For what each dimension covers, see your district's 5D+ documentation and the UW CEL materials linked below.
What does the "+" in 5D+ mean?
The "+" refers to Professional Collaboration and Communication, which the 5D+ rubric adds to the five instructional dimensions. EvalScribe lets you organize evidence for this area alongside the five dimensions.
What are the 5D+ rating levels?
Unsatisfactory, Basic, Proficient, and Distinguished. For what each level means, see your district's 5D+ documentation and the UW CEL materials linked below. EvalScribe offers suggested draft ratings for your review, and the ratings are yours.
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 for administrators who already use the framework, and it does not replace your district's official scoring platform.
Does EvalScribe replace evaluator judgment?
No. EvalScribe drafts evidence-organized 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 organized 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?
General-purpose AI tools aren't designed around how teacher evaluations are written. They can invent dimensions and subdimensions, score inconsistently, and produce vague comments. EvalScribe is built for evaluation write-ups and the administrator workflow around them, 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 supports evaluators in all 50 states and Washington D.C., including districts that use widely adopted 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