AI-powered teacher evaluations
for NIET schools.
Cut evaluation documentation from hours to minutes. EvalScribe is built around the NIET Teaching and Learning Standards Rubric natively — its four domains and the five-point scale, in the rubric's own language.
Saved per evaluation
The NIET rubric, built in
Scored 1 to 5
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.
NIET-specific
All four NIET domains and the five-point scale, built in natively.
Privacy-first
Transient processing on Microsoft Azure. Never used for AI training.
Built for workflow
Designed around the realities of evaluating with the NIET rubric.
The NIET rubric. EvalScribe is built around all four domains.
Developed by the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching (NIET), the Teaching and Learning Standards Rubric is a research-based framework used by districts and states across the country. It organizes practice into four domains and a set of indicators, each scored on a five-point scale. EvalScribe is built around the rubric's own structure and language.
NIET Teaching and Learning Standards Rubric
Grounded in roughly two decades of research and refined through the TAP System for Teacher and Student Advancement, the NIET rubric defines effective teaching across four domains. It provides a common language for observation and coaching, and it underlies several state systems, including South Carolina's SCTS 4.0 and Louisiana's Educator Rubric. EvalScribe maps your observation notes to the indicator they support and drafts a rating and evidence-anchored feedback in the rubric's own language.
Four domains.
Instruction
12 indicators- Standards and Objectives
- Motivating Students
- Presenting Instructional Content
- Lesson Structure and Pacing
- Activities and Materials
- Questioning
- Academic Feedback
- Grouping Students
- Teacher Content Knowledge
- Teacher Knowledge of Students
- Thinking
- Problem Solving
Designing and Planning Instruction
3 indicators- Instructional Plans
- Student Work
- Assessment
Learning Environment
4 indicators- Expectations
- Managing Student Behavior
- Environment
- Respectful Culture
Professionalism
4 indicators- Growing and Developing Professionally
- Reflecting on Teaching
- Community Involvement
- School Responsibilities
The five-point NIET scale.
Significantly Below Expectations
Professional judgment
At Expectations
The proficiency standardProfessional judgment
Significantly Above Expectations
NIET defines performance at levels 1, 3, and 5. Levels 2 and 4 are scored on the evidence using the observer's professional judgment — a 2 when practice is stronger than level 1 but short of At Expectations, and a 4 when it is strong but not yet Significantly Above. At Expectations is the proficiency standard. EvalScribe drafts to each defined level's own criteria.
How EvalScribe handles the NIET rubric
All four domains and their indicators, along with the five-point scale, are built into the tool, with the descriptors that define levels 1, 3, and 5. EvalScribe maps the evidence from your observation notes to the indicator it supports and drafts best-fit ratings and evidence-anchored feedback in the rubric's own language — so the write-up is defensible, traceable back to what you observed, and ready to inform the evaluation.
Scope of the score. EvalScribe drafts the observation-based write-up. Any student-growth measures and the overall summative rating are determined by your district's NIET implementation, not the app.
An independent tool. EvalScribe is not affiliated with or endorsed by the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching. It references the rubric's structure so administrators who already use it can draft and organize observations; it does not reproduce the official rubric. If your state or district uses a specific NIET-based rubric, tell us at [email protected] and we'll make sure it's set correctly.
How EvalScribe works with the NIET rubric.
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 indicators
EvalScribe identifies which NIET indicator 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 the NIET rubric.
Pasting your walkthrough notes into a general-purpose chatbot might produce a paragraph that sounds polished — but for NIET documentation, "sounds polished" isn't the bar. Defensible, indicator-aligned evaluations are.
| Capability | Generic AI (ChatGPT, Claude, etc.) | EvalScribe |
|---|---|---|
| Framework awareness | ✕No concept of the NIET rubric, its four domains, or its five-point scale. Treats every prompt the same. | ✓Built around the NIET rubric's actual domains, indicator language, and five-point scale. |
| Indicator mapping | ✕Invents domain and indicator labels that don't match the NIET rubric. | ✓Maps evidence to the real NIET indicators using the actual rubric loaded into the app. |
| The five-point scale | ✕Assumes every level has a label and misuses the scale. | ✓Reflects that NIET defines levels 1, 3, and 5, with 2 and 4 scored on professional judgment. |
| The At Expectations bar | ✕Treats the scale as generic good-to-bad, missing that At Expectations — level 3 — is the proficiency standard. | ✓Drafts to the real NIET bar — At Expectations is solid practice; level 5 requires significantly above. |
| Instruction depth | ✕Collapses NIET's twelve-indicator instruction domain into vague generalities. | ✓Handles all twelve Instruction indicators — from Questioning to Academic Feedback — individually. |
| 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 NIET rubric. |
| 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 NIET 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 NIET 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 NIET 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 NIET rubric & EvalScribe — common questions.
Does EvalScribe support the NIET rubric?
Yes. EvalScribe is built around the NIET Teaching and Learning Standards Rubric — all four domains, their indicators, and the five-point scale. It maps your observation evidence to the indicator it supports and drafts a rating and feedback in the rubric's own language.
What are the four NIET domains?
Instruction, Designing and Planning Instruction, Learning Environment, and Professionalism. Instruction is the largest domain, with twelve indicators covering questioning, academic feedback, thinking, problem solving, and more.
What is the NIET rating scale?
A five-point scale. NIET defines performance at levels 1 (Significantly Below Expectations), 3 (At Expectations), and 5 (Significantly Above Expectations). Levels 2 and 4 are scored on the evidence using the observer's professional judgment. At Expectations, level 3, is the proficiency standard.
Is the NIET rubric the same as the TAP rubric?
The NIET Teaching and Learning Standards Rubric grew out of the TAP System for Teacher and Student Advancement and is often called a TAP-aligned rubric. It also underlies several state systems, including South Carolina's SCTS 4.0 and Louisiana's Educator Rubric. If your state uses a NIET-based rubric, EvalScribe supports it — tell us which at [email protected].
Is EvalScribe affiliated with NIET?
No. The NIET rubric is developed and owned by the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching. EvalScribe is an independent drafting tool that supports administrators who already use the rubric; it references the rubric's structure for compatibility and does not replace your district's official scoring platform.
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 the NIET rubric. They invent domains and indicators, misuse the five-point scale, hand out level 5 freely, and produce vague comments that miss the distinctions the rubric requires. EvalScribe is built around the NIET rubric's actual domains and five-point scale — and the evaluator workflow that surrounds it — from capture through final export.
Where can I read the official NIET sources?
NIET describes its rubric and observation system on its Rubric and Observation Systems page. States that have adopted NIET-based rubrics — including South Carolina and Louisiana — also publish their handbooks and indicator definitions.
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 administrators spend less time documenting NIET 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