AI-powered teacher evaluations
for Minnesota educators.
Cut evaluation documentation from hours to minutes. EvalScribe is built around the Danielson Framework that Minnesota districts commonly use for the teacher-practice part of their local TDE model, drafting the professional-practice write-up in the framework's own language.
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.
Minnesota-specific
Built on Danielson, aligned to Minnesota's Standards of Effective Practice.
Privacy-first
Transient processing on Microsoft Azure. Never used for AI training.
Built for workflow
Designed around the realities of being a Minnesota evaluator.
Minnesota's TDE. EvalScribe is built around Danielson.
Under Minnesota Statutes 122A.40 and 122A.41, each district — through joint agreement with its local teacher union — designs its own Teacher Development and Evaluation (TDE) model, or uses the state example model. The teacher-practice rubric is built on Minnesota's Standards of Effective Practice, and most districts use the Danielson Framework — the framework EvalScribe is built around.
Three components, built on the Standards of Effective Practice
A Minnesota teacher evaluation rests on three components: teacher practice, student engagement, and student learning and achievement. The teacher-practice rubric must be based on the Standards of Effective Practice (Minnesota Rules 8710.2000) and describe performance across at least three levels. EvalScribe maps your observation evidence to the component it supports and drafts a rating and evidence-anchored feedback in the framework's own language.
The three components.
Teacher Practice
ObservationProfessional practice measured against a rubric based on the Standards of Effective Practice. This is the observation piece EvalScribe drafts.
Student Engagement
ConnectionLongitudinal data on student engagement and connection, drawn from measures the district selects within its model.
Student Learning & Achievement
35%Student growth measures — value-added models or student learning goals — that determine 35% of the summative result.
The teacher-practice rubric: the four Danielson domains.
Minnesota requires a teacher-practice rubric based on the Standards of Effective Practice, and the Danielson Framework — used by most Minnesota districts — maps to those standards. EvalScribe drafts against its four 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.
At least three levels of performance.
Unsatisfactory
Basic
Proficient
Distinguished
Minnesota requires common descriptions of effectiveness across at least three levels, but does not mandate specific labels. The Danielson four-level scale is shown here; your district's model sets its own labels, and EvalScribe drafts to them.
How EvalScribe handles Minnesota evaluations
The four Danielson domains are built into the tool, each with the framework's own language and the distinctions that separate adjacent levels. EvalScribe maps the evidence from your observation notes to the component it supports and drafts best-fit ratings and evidence-anchored feedback, so the teacher-practice write-up is defensible and traceable back to what you observed — ready for your district's rubric.
Scope of the score. EvalScribe drafts the teacher-practice component — the observation piece. The student engagement component and the student learning and achievement component (the 35% student-growth share), along with peer review and the combination of all three into the summative result, are handled in your district's TDE process, not the app.
Built for local models. Because Minnesota districts design their own TDE model with their union, the rubric, labels, and measures vary. EvalScribe is built around the Danielson Framework and the Standards of Effective Practice it aligns to, so it fits districts using Danielson or a Danielson-aligned local rubric. Confirm your district's adopted model, and if it would help to see a specific local rubric supported, email [email protected].
How EvalScribe works with Minnesota's TDE.
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 teacher-practice 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 Minnesota evaluations.
Pasting your walkthrough notes into a general-purpose chatbot might produce a paragraph that sounds polished — but for Minnesota TDE 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 Minnesota districts use, or the Standards of Effective Practice. Treats every prompt the same. | ✓Built around the four Danielson domains, aligned to Minnesota's Standards of Effective Practice. |
| Component mapping | ✕Hallucinates domain and component labels and invents rubric language that doesn't match Danielson. | ✓Maps evidence to the real Danielson components using the actual framework loaded into the app. |
| TDE structure | ✕No idea Minnesota evaluations run on three components with a locally bargained model. | ✓Built for the teacher-practice component, ready for your district's local TDE model. |
| Scope of the score | ✕Assumes the observation is the whole rating, ignoring student engagement and the 35% growth share. | ✓Drafts teacher practice; leaves engagement, the 35% growth, and the summative to your district. |
| District labels | ✕Defaults to generic good-to-bad framing that misses your district's rubric levels. | ✓Drafts to the Danielson levels and adapts to the labels your district's model uses. |
| 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 Minnesota 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.
Minnesota's TDE & EvalScribe — common questions.
How does teacher evaluation work in Minnesota?
Under Minnesota Statutes 122A.40 and 122A.41, each district designs its own Teacher Development and Evaluation (TDE) model through joint agreement with its local union, or uses the state example model. Evaluations rest on three components — teacher practice, student engagement, and student learning and achievement — with a teacher-practice rubric based on the Standards of Effective Practice. EvalScribe drafts the teacher-practice component.
How much of a Minnesota evaluation is student growth?
Student growth measures — value-added models or student learning goals — determine 35% of the summative result. EvalScribe drafts the teacher-practice piece; the 35% student-growth share and the student engagement component are handled in your district's TDE process, along with peer review and the final summative.
Does Minnesota require a specific evaluation rubric?
Not a single statewide one. The law requires a teacher-practice rubric based on the Standards of Effective Practice (Minnesota Rules 8710.2000), with culturally responsive methodologies and at least three levels of performance. Districts choose or build the rubric within those requirements, and most use the Danielson Framework. EvalScribe is built around Danielson and the Standards of Effective Practice it aligns to.
What are Minnesota's rating levels?
Minnesota requires common descriptions of effectiveness across at least three levels, but does not mandate specific labels — your district's model sets them. Districts using Danielson typically use its four levels: Unsatisfactory, Basic, Proficient, and Distinguished. EvalScribe drafts toward the levels your district's rubric uses.
Does EvalScribe handle peer review and the summative rating?
No. Minnesota's TDE process includes peer review and peer coaching, which are district processes, and combines the three components into the summative result. EvalScribe drafts the teacher-practice observation write-up — the documentation that anchors it. Peer review, student engagement, the 35% growth measures, and the summative stay in your district's process.
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 Minnesota evaluates teachers. They invent Danielson components, ignore the three-component TDE structure, and produce vague comments that miss the level distinctions the rubric requires. EvalScribe is built around the Danielson framework's actual structure and the Standards of Effective Practice — and the evaluator workflow that surrounds them — from capture through final export.
Where can I read the official Minnesota TDE sources?
The Minnesota Department of Education publishes Teacher Development and Evaluation guidance on its educator development pages. The requirements are set out in Minnesota Statutes 122A.40, subdivision 8, and 122A.41, subdivision 5, and the Standards of Effective Practice live in Minnesota Rules 8710.2000.
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 Minnesota 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