AI-powered teacher evaluations
for Iowa educators.
Cut evaluation documentation from hours to minutes. EvalScribe is built around Iowa's evaluation framework natively — all eight Iowa Teaching Standards and all forty-three criteria, in the standards' own language.
Saved per evaluation
All 8 standards, built in
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.
Iowa-specific
All 8 Iowa Teaching Standards and their 43 criteria, built in natively.
Privacy-first
Transient processing on Microsoft Azure. Never used for AI training.
Built for workflow
Designed around the realities of being an Iowa evaluator.
Iowa evaluates on eight teaching standards. EvalScribe is built around all of them.
The Iowa Teaching Standards and Criteria (Iowa Admin. Code 281—83.3; Iowa Code chapter 284) are the statewide foundation for teacher evaluation — eight standards and forty-three criteria. Iowa gives districts real latitude: through their Teacher Quality Committees, districts determine the evidence and instruments, and the model turns on whether a licensed Iowa evaluator determines the teacher meets each standard — supported by evidence and professional conversation, not a criterion-by-criterion score. EvalScribe is built around all eight standards and their criteria.
Iowa Teaching Standards & Criteria
Eight standards span academic performance, content knowledge, planning, instructional delivery, monitoring student learning, classroom management, professional growth, and professional responsibilities. Beneath them sit forty-three criteria — updated effective April 2024 — that describe what quality practice looks like. Iowa's model is distinctive: evidence is gathered under a standard rather than scored line-by-line, and a single piece of evidence can support more than one standard. The licensed evaluator, the professional conversation, and district guidelines determine whether each standard is met.
Eight standards. Forty-three criteria.
Academic Performance & School Goals
7 criteriaContent Knowledge
4 criteriaPlanning & Preparation
5 criteriaInstructional Delivery
6 criteriaMonitoring Student Learning
6 criteriaClassroom Management
5 criteriaProfessional Growth
5 criteriaProfessional Responsibilities
5 criteriaThe four-level performance scale.
Does Not Meet
Approaching
Meets Standard
Expected professional standardExceeds Standard
How EvalScribe handles the Iowa Teaching Standards
All eight standards and all forty-three criteria are built into the tool, each with the framework's own language, look-fors, and the distinctions that separate Approaching from Meets Standard and Meets from Exceeds. EvalScribe organizes your observation evidence under the relevant standards and criteria — recognizing that one piece of evidence can support several — and drafts standard-aligned ratings and feedback on the four-level Does Not Meet → Exceeds Standard scale.
Honest scope on Iowa's model: Iowa doesn't prescribe a single statewide rating scale, and it doesn't require a score on every criterion — the determination of whether a teacher meets a standard rests with the licensed Iowa evaluator, through professional conversation and your district's guidelines. EvalScribe drafts and organizes the evidence; the evaluator decides. Whether your district uses a meets/does-not-meet determination or a multi-level rubric, you stay the last set of eyes. The teacher's Individual Professional Development Plan (IPDP) stays teacher-authored, and EvalScribe's Iowa framework is built around the classroom-teacher criteria under 281—83.3 (the Area Education Agency alternative criteria are a separate set).
How EvalScribe works with the Iowa Teaching Standards.
A five-step path from the back of the classroom to a finished, standards-aligned evaluation.
Observe the classroom
Walkthrough or formal observation — 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 under the standards
EvalScribe places each note under the relevant Iowa Teaching Standards and their 43 criteria — including evidence that supports more than one standard.
Suggested ratings & comments
Get draft standard-aligned ratings and feedback language on the four-level scale. The licensed evaluator makes the determination.
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 Iowa-aware drafting pipeline as scans and dictation.
Why generic AI falls short for the Iowa Teaching Standards.
Pasting your walkthrough notes into a general-purpose chatbot might produce a paragraph that sounds polished — but for Iowa evaluation documentation, "sounds polished" isn't the bar. Defensible, standards-aligned evaluations are.
| Capability | Generic AI (ChatGPT, Claude, etc.) | EvalScribe |
|---|---|---|
| Framework awareness | ✕No concept of the Iowa Teaching Standards, the 43 criteria, or Iowa's evidence-under-a-standard model. | ✓Built around the Iowa Teaching Standards' actual structure, criteria, and four-level scale. |
| Criteria mapping | ✕Hallucinates standard and criteria numbers and invents language that doesn't exist in the framework. | ✓Organizes evidence under the real 8 standards and 43 criteria using the actual framework loaded into the app. |
| Iowa's evidence model | ✕Has no idea Iowa determines "meets the standard" from a body of evidence — not a line-by-line score on every criterion. | ✓Organizes evidence under each standard the way Iowa's model intends — including evidence that supports several standards — and leaves the determination to the licensed evaluator. |
| Level distinctions | ✕Defaults to generic "good/great" framing that misses the Approaching-vs-Meets and Meets-vs-Exceeds distinctions. | ✓Rubric-aware scoring that distinguishes the four levels in the standards' own terms. |
| 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 Iowa Teaching Standards. |
| Evaluator workflow | ✕No concept of comprehensive evaluations for beginning teachers or performance reviews for career teachers. | ✓Built around the actual evaluator workflow — walkthroughs, formal observations, and the evidence write-up for both tracks. |
| 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 the standard it supports. | ✓Every comment is tied to evidence pulled from your notes and the standard and criterion it supports. |
How much Iowa 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 an Iowa Teaching Standards evaluation isn't the same as watching it happen. The demo walks through a real observation — capture, evidence mapping, drafting, 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 Iowa Teaching Standards
- 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.
Iowa Teaching Standards & EvalScribe — common questions.
Does EvalScribe support the full Iowa Teaching Standards?
Yes — all eight standards and all forty-three criteria are built in natively, each with the framework's own language, look-fors, and the distinctions that separate adjacent levels. EvalScribe organizes your evidence under the right standards and criteria and drafts standard-aligned ratings and comments.
Does EvalScribe decide whether a teacher meets a standard?
No — and that's by design. Iowa's model puts the determination with the licensed Iowa evaluator, reached through the professional conversation with the teacher and your district's guidelines, based on the body of evidence under each standard. EvalScribe organizes the evidence and drafts standard-aligned language; the evaluator makes the call.
Is it 42 or 43 criteria?
Forty-three, as of the current rule. The Iowa Teaching Standards and Criteria were amended effective April 2024 (ARC 7662C), which brought Standard 8 to five criteria and the total to 43. Many handbooks and reference documents still cite the older figure of 42. EvalScribe reflects the current 43-criteria rule.
My district uses its own instrument or rating scale — does that matter?
Iowa doesn't prescribe a single statewide rating scale — districts set evidence expectations through their Teacher Quality Committees. EvalScribe uses a four-level Does Not Meet → Exceeds Standard scale aligned to the standards. Whether your district uses a meets/does-not-meet determination or a multi-level rubric, the evaluator finalizes every rating.
Does EvalScribe handle comprehensive evaluations and performance reviews?
Yes. EvalScribe supports the observation and evidence write-up for both tracks — the comprehensive evaluation for beginning teachers and the performance review for career teachers (conducted at least once every three years).
What about the Individual Professional Development Plan (IPDP)?
The IPDP is the teacher's own plan and stays teacher-authored — that's where the framework intends it. EvalScribe handles the observation and evidence write-up, not the teacher's professional development plan.
Does EvalScribe replace evaluator judgment?
No. EvalScribe drafts evidence-mapped evaluations and suggested ratings. The licensed Iowa evaluator reviews, edits, and finalizes every document. The professional judgment is always yours — EvalScribe just removes the typing.
What about Area Education Agency (AEA) staff?
Iowa's rule includes a set of alternative criteria for AEA staff who meet the definition of "teacher." EvalScribe's Iowa framework is built around the classroom-teacher criteria under Iowa Admin. Code 281—83.3. If you evaluate AEA staff on the alternative criteria, let us know at [email protected].
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 Iowa Teaching Standards, the 43 criteria, or Iowa's evidence-under-a-standard model. They invent criteria that don't exist and produce vague comments that miss the level distinctions. EvalScribe is built around the framework's actual structure — and the evaluator workflow that surrounds it — from capture through final export.
Where can I read the official Iowa Teaching Standards sources?
The primary sources are the Iowa Department of Education Teacher Quality pages and the Iowa Model Educator Evaluation System User Guide. The standards and criteria are codified at Iowa Admin. Code 281—83.3, under Iowa Code chapter 284.
Which other state 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 Iowa 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