AI-powered teacher evaluations
for Virginia educators.
Cut evaluation documentation from hours to minutes. EvalScribe is built around Virginia's Teacher Performance Evaluation System (TPES) natively — all eight performance standards from the 2021 Guidelines, and the Ineffective to Highly Effective scale, in the standards' own language.
Saved per evaluation
VDOE TPES, built in
Ineffective to Highly Effective
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.
Virginia-specific
All eight VDOE performance standards, built in natively.
Privacy-first
Transient processing on Microsoft Azure. Never used for AI training.
Built for workflow
Designed around the realities of being a Virginia evaluator.
The VDOE performance standards. EvalScribe is built around all eight.
Virginia evaluates teachers through the Teacher Performance Evaluation System (TPES), built on the Board of Education's 2021 Guidelines for Uniform Performance Standards and Evaluation Criteria for Teachers. Eight performance standards define effective practice, seven documented through observation and evidence and one from student academic progress. EvalScribe is built around the standards and their own language.
The Uniform Performance Standards (TPES)
Adopted by the Virginia Board of Education in March 2021, the standards added Culturally Responsive Teaching and Equitable Practices as a new sixth standard. School divisions build local evaluation systems on these standards. EvalScribe maps your observation evidence to the standard it supports and drafts a rating and evidence-anchored feedback in the standards' own language.
Eight performance standards.
Professional Knowledge
Demonstrates an understanding of the curriculum, subject content, and developmental needs of students.
Instructional Planning
Plans using standards, effective strategies, resources, and data to meet the needs of all students.
Instructional Delivery
Uses a variety of research-based strategies to engage students and meet individual learning needs.
Assessment of and for Student Learning
Uses a range of assessment strategies and data to measure, document, and guide student progress.
Learning Environment
Creates a safe, respectful, well-managed environment that is conducive to learning.
Culturally Responsive Teaching & Equitable Practices
New in 2021Demonstrates a commitment to equity and provides culturally inclusive, responsive instruction for all students.
Professionalism
Maintains professional ethics, communicates effectively, and takes responsibility for professional growth.
Student Academic Progress
Student growthThe work of the teacher results in acceptable, measurable, and appropriate student academic progress.
The four TPES ratings.
Ineffective
Approaching Effective
Effective
The professional standardHighly Effective
Effective is the expected professional standard — consistent, quality practice. Highly Effective reflects performance that exceeds the standard with students taking greater ownership. These are the 2021 recommended labels; some divisions modify them, and EvalScribe adapts to your division's scale.
Standard 8 and local implementation
Standard 8, Student Academic Progress, is a significant component of the summative rating, documented from student-growth data rather than from a single observation. School divisions implement local systems on the state Guidelines, and may modify the rating labels and weighting within them.
EvalScribe drafts the observation-based professional-practice write-up across Standards 1 through 7. Standard 8 and the overall summative rating are set by the division, outside the app.
How EvalScribe handles the TPES standards
All eight performance standards are built into the tool, each with the Guidelines' own language and the indicators and sample performance descriptors that separate stronger and weaker practice. EvalScribe maps the evidence from your observation notes to the standard it supports and drafts best-fit ratings and evidence-anchored feedback across Standards 1 through 7 — so the write-up is defensible, traceable back to what you observed, and ready to inform the summative evaluation.
Scope of the score. EvalScribe drafts the observation-based professional-practice standards. Standard 8 (Student Academic Progress) and the overall summative rating are determined by the division from student-growth data, not the app.
Current with Virginia's 2021 Guidelines. EvalScribe uses the eight performance standards and the 2021 recommended rating scale. If your division uses modified labels or local weighting and you'd like it reflected, email [email protected].
How EvalScribe works with the TPES standards.
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 standards
EvalScribe identifies which TPES performance standard each note supports, across Standards 1 through 7.
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 TPES.
Pasting your walkthrough notes into a general-purpose chatbot might produce a paragraph that sounds polished — but for TPES 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 TPES, its eight standards, or the current four-level scale. Treats every prompt the same. | ✓Built around Virginia's actual eight performance standards, their language, and the 2021 rating scale. |
| Standard mapping | ✕Invents standard labels and criteria that don't match the Uniform Performance Standards. | ✓Maps evidence to the real eight standards using the actual Guidelines loaded into the app. |
| Current 2021 scale | ✕Defaults to outdated labels, unaware Virginia moved to Highly Effective / Effective / Approaching Effective / Ineffective. | ✓Uses the 2021 recommended scale and adapts to your division's modified labels. |
| Standards 1-7 vs. Standard 8 | ✕Blurs the observation standards together with Student Academic Progress. | ✓Drafts the observation write-up for Standards 1-7 and leaves Standard 8 and the summative rating to the division. |
| Standard 6 depth | ✕Ignores the 2021 Culturally Responsive Teaching and Equitable Practices standard entirely. | ✓Handles Standard 6 as its own standard, with the Guidelines' equity language. |
| 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 TPES standards. |
| 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 Virginia 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 TPES 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 division 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 Virginia TPES
- 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
Division-wide
For divisions deploying across every evaluator.
Best value for full deployments
- Everything in School-wide
- 20% volume discount
- Single access code for the entire division
- Direct support contact for rollout
All pricing shown is introductory and may change. For school and division plans, EvalScribe issues a unique access code that the buyer distributes to their evaluators.
The TPES & EvalScribe — common questions.
Does EvalScribe support Virginia's TPES standards?
Yes, for the observation-based standards. EvalScribe is built around all eight Uniform Performance Standards from the 2021 Guidelines and drafts the observation write-up across Standards 1 through 7 — Professional Knowledge, Instructional Planning, Instructional Delivery, Assessment, Learning Environment, Culturally Responsive Teaching and Equitable Practices, and Professionalism — in the standards' own language, on the four-level scale.
What are the current TPES rating levels?
The 2021 Guidelines recommend Highly Effective, Effective, Approaching Effective, and Ineffective. Effective is the expected professional standard. Some divisions modify these labels within their local systems, so EvalScribe uses the 2021 recommended scale and adapts to your division's labels.
What is Standard 6, and why was it added?
Standard 6 is Culturally Responsive Teaching and Equitable Practices, added by the Board of Education in 2021 to implement House Bill 1904 and Senate Bill 1196, which require teacher evaluations to include an evaluation of cultural competency. It asks teachers to demonstrate a commitment to equity and provide culturally inclusive, responsive instruction for all students. EvalScribe handles it as its own standard.
Does EvalScribe handle Standard 8, Student Academic Progress?
Standard 8 is a significant component of the summative rating, documented from student-growth data rather than from a single observation. It is set and scored through the division's process. EvalScribe drafts the observation-based write-up for Standards 1 through 7; Standard 8 and the overall summative rating are handled outside the app.
Does EvalScribe produce the summative rating?
No. EvalScribe drafts the observation write-up and best-fit ratings on the professional-practice standards. The overall summative rating combines the standards with Standard 8 and any local weighting, and is determined by the division, 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 the TPES. They invent standards, default to outdated rating labels, skip the 2021 equity standard, and produce vague comments that miss the distinctions the Guidelines require. EvalScribe is built around Virginia's actual eight performance standards and the current scale — and the evaluator workflow that surrounds it — from capture through final export.
Where can I read the official TPES sources?
The Virginia Department of Education publishes the Guidelines for Uniform Performance Standards and Evaluation Criteria for Teachers (approved March 18, 2021) and the TPES Handbook on its Teacher Performance and Evaluation page. The system was developed with Stronge & Associates.
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 Virginia 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