AI-powered teacher evaluations
for Michigan educators.
Cut evaluation documentation from hours to minutes. EvalScribe is built around the Charlotte Danielson Framework, one of Michigan's state-approved evaluation tools, drafting the professional-practice write-up toward the current Effective, Developing, and Needing Support ratings.
Saved per evaluation
All Danielson domains, built in
Student growth share
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.
Michigan-specific
Built on Danielson, drafting toward Michigan's current rating levels.
Privacy-first
Transient processing on Microsoft Azure. Never used for AI training.
Built for workflow
Designed around the realities of being a Michigan evaluator.
Michigan's approved tools. EvalScribe is built around Danielson.
Under MCL 380.1249, Michigan districts adopt a rigorous, transparent, and fair evaluation system built on a state-approved evaluation tool. The Michigan Department of Education (MDE) maintains the list, districts choose from it through collective bargaining, and one of those tools is the Charlotte Danielson Framework for Teaching — the framework EvalScribe is built around.
A menu of tools, with Danielson at the core of EvalScribe
MDE's state-approved teacher evaluation tools are the Charlotte Danielson Framework for Teaching, the Marzano Teacher Evaluation Model, the Marzano Focused Teacher Evaluation Model, the Thoughtful Classroom, and the 5 Dimensions of Teaching and Learning (5D+). Districts may use one of these, modify one, or build their own within state requirements. EvalScribe is built around the Danielson Framework and the professional-practice domains these tools share.
The four Danielson domains.
Planning and Preparation
Before the lessonKnowledge of content, students, and resources, and coherent instructional design and assessment planning.
Classroom Environment
The classroomA culture of respect and rapport, clear expectations, managed routines, and a space that supports learning.
Instruction
Teaching in actionClear communication, strong questioning and discussion, student engagement, and using assessment to adjust instruction.
Professional Responsibilities
Beyond the lessonReflection on practice, accurate records, communication with families, professional growth, and contribution to the school.
What changed in 2024
Public Acts 224 and 225 of 2023 reshaped Michigan's system, effective July 1, 2024. Student growth and assessment data (or student learning objectives) now count for no more than 20% of the year-end evaluation, down from 40%, with the exact percentage set through collective bargaining. The remainder — the majority of the rating — is based primarily on the teacher's performance as measured by the district's evaluation tool.
Observations must run at least 15 minutes, with at least two in the evaluation year and written feedback within 30 days. All evaluators must complete rater reliability training.
Michigan's current rating levels (since July 1, 2024).
Effective
Developing
Needing Support
These three ratings replaced the former four (highly effective, effective, minimally effective, ineffective). A teacher rated Developing or Needing Support receives an individualized development plan; a teacher not given a year-end evaluation is deemed Effective.
How EvalScribe handles Michigan evaluations
The four Danielson domains are built into the tool, each with the framework's own language and the distinctions that separate adjacent ratings. EvalScribe maps the evidence from your observation notes to the component it supports and drafts best-fit ratings and evidence-anchored feedback — toward Michigan's current levels, Effective, Developing, and Needing Support — so the write-up is defensible and traceable back to what you observed. That fits the state's observation-heavy requirements, where turning at least two documented observations into written feedback within 30 days is most of the work.
Scope of the score. EvalScribe drafts the professional-practice piece — the observation-tool portion, which now makes up the majority of the rating. The student growth and assessment portion (no more than 20%) and the combination into the year-end rating are handled in your district's process, not the app.
Built around Danielson. Michigan districts bargain which approved tool they use. EvalScribe is built around the Danielson Framework and the professional-practice domains these tools share, so it fits districts using Danielson. If your district bargained a different approved tool, such as Marzano, the Thoughtful Classroom, or 5D+, and you'd like to see it supported, email [email protected] — hearing from you helps us prioritize.
How EvalScribe works with Michigan's 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 components
EvalScribe identifies which Danielson component each note supports, across all four domains.
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 Michigan evaluations.
Pasting your walkthrough notes into a general-purpose chatbot might produce a paragraph that sounds polished — but for Michigan 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 Danielson domains Michigan districts use, or the state's rating levels. Treats every prompt the same. | ✓Built around the four Danielson domains, their component language, and Michigan's current ratings. |
| Current rating labels | ✕Defaults to the old highly effective / minimally effective / ineffective labels that Michigan retired in 2024. | ✓Drafts toward Michigan's current levels — Effective, Developing, Needing Support. |
| Approved-tool awareness | ✕No idea Michigan districts bargain a tool from a state-approved list. | ✓Built around Danielson, one of Michigan's state-approved tools, ready for districts that bargained it. |
| Scope of the score | ✕Assumes the observation is the whole rating, ignoring the separate student growth portion. | ✓Drafts the professional-practice majority; leaves the ≤20% growth and year-end rating to your district. |
| Component mapping | ✕Hallucinates domain and component labels that don't match Danielson. | ✓Maps evidence to the real Danielson components using the actual framework loaded into the app. |
| 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 Danielson 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 Michigan 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 Danielson 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 Danielson 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.
Michigan evaluations & EvalScribe — common questions.
What evaluation tools does Michigan use?
MDE maintains a list of state-approved teacher evaluation tools: the Charlotte Danielson Framework for Teaching, the Marzano Teacher Evaluation Model, the Marzano Focused Teacher Evaluation Model, the Thoughtful Classroom, and the 5 Dimensions of Teaching and Learning (5D+). Districts choose one through collective bargaining, modify one, or build their own. EvalScribe is built around the Danielson Framework, one of those approved tools.
What are Michigan's current teacher rating levels?
Since July 1, 2024, Michigan uses three ratings: Effective, Developing, and Needing Support. These replaced the former four (highly effective, effective, minimally effective, ineffective). A teacher rated Developing or Needing Support receives an individualized development plan, and a teacher who isn't given a year-end evaluation is deemed Effective. EvalScribe drafts toward these current levels.
How much of a Michigan evaluation is student growth?
Beginning in 2024-25, student growth and assessment data (or student learning objectives) count for no more than 20% of the year-end evaluation, down from 40%, with the exact percentage set through collective bargaining. The remainder — the majority — is based primarily on the district's evaluation tool. EvalScribe drafts that professional-practice piece; the growth portion and year-end rating are handled in your district's process.
Does EvalScribe help with Michigan's observation requirements?
That's exactly where it fits. Michigan requires at least two observations in the evaluation year, each a minimum of 15 minutes, with written feedback within 30 days. EvalScribe turns your observation notes into standards-aligned written feedback quickly, so meeting the 30-day window across a caseload is far less of a scramble. Rater reliability training and the observation schedule stay with you and your district.
What if my district bargained a tool other than Danielson?
EvalScribe is built around the Danielson Framework and the professional-practice domains Michigan's approved tools share, so it fits districts using Danielson most directly. If your district bargained Marzano, the Thoughtful Classroom, 5D+, or a local tool and you'd like to see it supported, email [email protected] — hearing from you helps us prioritize.
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 how Michigan evaluates teachers. They invent Danielson components, reach for the retired highly-effective-to-ineffective labels, and produce vague comments that miss the level distinctions the framework requires. EvalScribe is built around the Danielson framework's actual structure and Michigan's current ratings — and the evaluator workflow that surrounds them — from capture through final export.
Where can I read the official Michigan evaluation sources?
The Michigan Department of Education publishes educator evaluation guidance, the state-approved tool list, and the summary of 2024 changes on its Educator Evaluation pages. The governing law is MCL 380.1249, as amended by Public Acts 224 and 225 of 2023.
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 Michigan 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