AI-powered teacher evaluations
for Illinois educators.
Cut PERA documentation from hours to minutes. EvalScribe drafts professional-practice write-ups aligned to your district's instructional framework and Illinois's four rating categories — Excellent, Proficient, Needs Improvement, Unsatisfactory.
Saved per evaluation
Statewide rating categories
Danielson, state model & more
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.
Illinois-specific
Fits your district's PERA framework and Illinois's four rating categories.
Privacy-first
Transient processing on Microsoft Azure. Never used for AI training.
Built for workflow
Designed around the realities of being an Illinois evaluator.
Illinois evaluates under PERA. EvalScribe fits your district's framework.
Illinois evaluates teachers under the Performance Evaluation Reform Act (PERA), codified in Article 24A of the School Code (105 ILCS 5/24A) and 23 Ill. Admin. Code Part 50. Every teacher is rated in one of four statewide categories, using an instructional framework the district adopts through its PERA joint committee. There is no single mandated rubric — so EvalScribe drafts against whichever framework your district uses.
What Illinois requires of the instructional framework.
PERA doesn't prescribe one rubric, but it does set the bar. A district's instructional framework must be research-based, must address at least these three areas, and must align with the Illinois Professional Teaching Standards. The framework is adopted through the district's PERA joint committee.
Planning
Preparation and instructional design before the lesson.
Instructional delivery
Teaching in action — how the lesson is carried out.
Classroom management
The environment, routines, and conditions for learning.
The frameworks Illinois districts use
Within PERA's requirements, each district chooses its instructional framework. EvalScribe ships the ones Illinois districts commonly adopt, so it drafts the professional-practice write-up in the language of the framework your district selected.
Commonly adopted in Illinois.
The Framework for Teaching (Danielson)
Built inFour domains — planning and preparation, the classroom environment, instruction, and professional responsibilities. By far the most widely adopted framework in Illinois.
ISBE State Model
Ask usIllinois's optional state model framework, available for districts that adopt it rather than build their own.
A locally developed framework
Ask usA district may develop or adapt its own framework, provided it is research-based, addresses planning, instructional delivery, and classroom management, and aligns with the Illinois Professional Teaching Standards. Not sure yours is covered? Just ask.
Illinois's four performance rating categories.
Excellent
Proficient
Needs Improvement
Unsatisfactory
These four categories are set statewide by PERA (105 ILCS 5/24A-5); every Illinois teacher receives one of them.
How EvalScribe handles Illinois PERA
Tell EvalScribe which instructional framework your district uses, and it drafts the professional-practice write-up in that framework's language — mapping the evidence from your notes to the relevant domain or standard and drafting ratings and feedback you review and finalize, toward the four categories (Excellent, Proficient, Needs Improvement, Unsatisfactory). Because it ships the Danielson framework and other common models, EvalScribe fits your PERA plan rather than forcing a generic rubric onto it.
Student growth is now optional. Public Act 104-0020, signed June 30, 2025 and effective July 1, 2025, removed the requirement that teacher and principal evaluations include data and indicators of student growth as a factor. For a decade PERA had required student growth as a significant factor; now districts may include it if they choose, but they are no longer required to. Where a district still includes it, those measures are handled within its PERA plan, not by EvalScribe.
Scope of the score. EvalScribe drafts the professional-practice piece. The overall summative rating — and any student growth measures your district still elects to use — is determined by your district's PERA evaluation plan and joint committee, not the app. Confirm your district's adopted instructional framework and rating method; if it would help to see a specific framework supported, email [email protected].
How EvalScribe works with your PERA framework.
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 your framework
EvalScribe identifies which domain or standard of your district's framework each note supports.
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 PERA.
Pasting your walkthrough notes into a general-purpose chatbot might produce a paragraph that sounds polished — but for PERA documentation, "sounds polished" isn't the bar. Defensible, framework-aligned evaluations are.
| Capability | Generic AI (ChatGPT, Claude, etc.) | EvalScribe |
|---|---|---|
| Framework awareness | ✕No concept of PERA or that Illinois districts each adopt their own instructional framework. Treats every prompt the same. | ✓Built around the frameworks Illinois districts actually use — the Danielson framework and more. |
| Framework matching | ✕Invents domains and rubric language that don't match the framework your district adopted. | ✓Drafts in the language of your district's framework, using the actual rubric loaded into the app. |
| Local-control awareness | ✕Assumes a single statewide rubric that PERA doesn't prescribe. | ✓Fits your district's PERA plan and Illinois's four statewide rating categories. |
| Student growth status | ✕May assume growth measures are required, missing that Illinois made them optional in 2025. | ✓Drafts the professional-practice piece; leaves any locally chosen growth measures to your PERA plan. |
| Rating categories | ✕Defaults to generic good-to-bad framing that doesn't match Illinois's categories. | ✓Drafts toward Illinois's four categories — Excellent, Proficient, Needs Improvement, Unsatisfactory. |
| 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 your district's framework. |
| 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 Illinois 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 PERA 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 Illinois PERA frameworks
- 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.
Illinois PERA & EvalScribe — common questions.
Does EvalScribe work with Illinois PERA evaluations?
Yes. Illinois doesn't mandate one rubric — each district adopts its own instructional framework under PERA through its joint committee. EvalScribe ships the frameworks Illinois districts commonly use (the Danielson framework and more), so it drafts the professional-practice write-up in the language of your district's framework, toward the four rating categories (Excellent, Proficient, Needs Improvement, Unsatisfactory).
Is student growth still required in Illinois teacher evaluations?
No — not anymore. Public Act 104-0020, signed June 30, 2025 and effective July 1, 2025, removed the requirement that teacher and principal evaluations include data and indicators of student growth as a factor. For the previous decade PERA had required it as a significant factor. Districts may still include student growth if they choose, but they are no longer required to. Where a district does, it's handled within its PERA plan, not by EvalScribe.
Which instructional framework does my district use?
That's set by your district's PERA joint committee and must be research-based, address at least planning, instructional delivery, and classroom management, and align with the Illinois Professional Teaching Standards. Most Illinois districts use the Danielson Framework for Teaching; some use the ISBE state model or a locally developed framework. If you're unsure yours is supported, email [email protected].
What are Illinois's teacher evaluation ratings?
PERA sets four statewide rating categories: Excellent, Proficient, Needs Improvement, and Unsatisfactory (105 ILCS 5/24A-5). Every Illinois teacher receives one of these. How measures combine to reach a rating is determined by each district's approved PERA plan.
Does EvalScribe calculate my summative rating?
No. EvalScribe drafts the professional-practice piece — the evidence, ratings, and feedback against your district's framework. The overall summative rating, and any student growth measures your district still elects to use, are determined by its PERA evaluation plan and joint committee, not the app.
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 Illinois PERA or that every district adopts its own instructional framework. They invent standards, assume a statewide rubric that doesn't exist, and produce vague comments. EvalScribe is built around the frameworks Illinois districts actually use — and the evaluator workflow that surrounds them — from capture through final export.
Where can I read the official Illinois PERA sources?
The Illinois State Board of Education maintains the Educator Evaluations page. The governing law is Article 24A of the School Code (105 ILCS 5/24A), implemented by 23 Ill. Admin. Code Part 50, as amended by Public Act 104-0020.
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 Illinois 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