Teacher Evaluation Software for Private Schools: Matching Your Standard of Excellence

Your school's commitment to excellence is visible everywhere: the curated curriculum, the small class sizes, the faculty credentials, the campus, the parent communication. Families choose your school — and pay a premium — because every detail reflects a standard that public schools can't match.

Then there's your teacher evaluation process: a shared Google Doc template from 2019, a principal who writes feedback at midnight because there's no protected time for it, and a filing system that's mostly "search my email." The process that should be the engine of teacher development is, for many private schools, the one area where the standard slips.

It doesn't have to be this way. Modern teacher evaluation software can match the standard you set for everything else — and for private schools, the path to adopting it is shorter than you might think.

Table of Contents

• Why Private Schools Are Uniquely Positioned
• What Most Private Schools Are Doing Now
• What a Modern Evaluation Process Looks Like
• The Accreditation Angle
• Matching Your Standard of Excellence
• FAQ

Why Private Schools Are Uniquely Positioned

Private and independent schools have structural advantages when it comes to adopting better evaluation tools:

Decision authority lives in the building. A Head of School or Academic Dean can evaluate a tool and say yes in weeks, not months. There's no district procurement process, no board committee review, no RFP cycle. When something makes sense, you can move.

Shorter decision cycles mean faster impact. A private school that adopts a new evaluation tool in February can see results by April. A public district that starts the procurement process in February might be signing a contract in October.

Teacher quality is your value proposition. Parents paying $25,000-$45,000 per year in tuition expect world-class teaching. Teacher evaluation — done well — is how you ensure that promise is kept. It's not a compliance exercise for your school; it's a quality assurance mechanism that directly supports enrollment and retention.

Budget flexibility for the right tools. Private school budgets are tighter than people assume, but they're also more flexible. If a tool demonstrably saves administrator time and improves teacher development, the Head of School can allocate funds without navigating bureaucratic approval chains.

Faculty culture values growth. Independent school teachers often chose private education because they value professional culture, intellectual community, and continuous improvement. They're more likely to embrace evaluation as development — if the process actually delivers on that promise.

What Most Private Schools Are Doing Now

Let's be honest about the current state at most private and independent schools:

The template approach. A Word or Google Doc template gets shared among administrators at the beginning of the year. Each administrator adapts it to their style (or doesn't). There's no consistency and no longitudinal tracking. The template was probably created by a former administrator who left three years ago.

The narrative approach. The Head of School writes lengthy narrative evaluations for each teacher — thoughtful, personalized, and extremely time-consuming. This approach produces great feedback but doesn't scale. When the Head is out or overwhelmed, evaluations simply don't happen.

The minimal approach. Evaluation consists of a brief classroom visit followed by a hallway conversation. Nothing is documented beyond a checklist in the teacher's file. The school knows this isn't sufficient, but no one has time to build a better system.

The borrowed approach. The school adopted a public-school evaluation framework (Danielson, Marzano) but uses it awkwardly — the rubric language doesn't quite fit the independent school context, and teachers find it impersonal.

None of these approaches are terrible. But none of them match the standard your school sets for everything else.

What a Modern Evaluation Process Looks Like

A teacher evaluation process worthy of an independent school has these characteristics:

Personalized Feedback, Not Template Language

Every teacher receives feedback that's specific to what happened in their classroom — not generic comments that could apply to anyone. The feedback references exact moments from the observation, connects to the teacher's professional goals, and offers concrete next steps tailored to their development stage.

Continuity Across Observations

Each observation builds on the last. When you visit a teacher's classroom in February, the feedback references what you discussed in October. Growth areas are tracked over time. Strengths are acknowledged as they develop. The teacher experiences evaluation as a relationship, not a transaction.

Efficiency That Enables Depth

A Head of School who's also managing admissions, parent relationships, fundraising, and facilities doesn't have 2 hours per teacher per evaluation. The evaluation process needs to be efficient enough that it actually happens — consistently, for every teacher, with the quality each one deserves.

Framework Flexibility

Independent schools often have their own definition of excellent teaching — one that doesn't map neatly onto Danielson domains or Marzano elements. The evaluation tool should adapt to your school's values and expectations, not force you into someone else's framework.

Data That Informs Decisions

Over time, evaluation data should tell you something useful: which teachers are growing, where professional development investments should go, which departments have strengths worth sharing across the school. This requires structured, consistent feedback — not scattered narrative documents that can't be analyzed.

The Accreditation Angle

If your school is accredited by NAIS, a regional accrediting body, or a state association, you know that evaluation and professional development processes are part of every accreditation review. Accrediting bodies want to see:

• A systematic approach to teacher observation and evaluation
• Evidence that feedback is connected to professional growth
• Documentation of teacher development over time
• Alignment between evaluation processes and the school's stated mission

Many private schools scramble to assemble this evidence before accreditation visits — pulling together scattered documents, reconstructing evaluation histories, and writing after-the-fact summaries of professional development connections.

A structured evaluation tool creates this evidence automatically, as a byproduct of the work you're already doing. When the accreditation team arrives, the documentation is already there — organized, longitudinal, and clearly connected to your school's mission.

Matching Your Standard of Excellence

Trellis is a teacher development platform that matches the standard independent schools set for everything else:

• Personalized feedback from your observations. Input your notes — typed or audio-recorded — and Trellis produces structured, growth-oriented feedback specific to what you saw. No templates, no generic language.
• Longitudinal teacher profiles. Every observation builds on the last, automatically. Trellis tracks growth areas, strengths, and goals across the year — creating the continuity that makes evaluation feel like coaching.
• 15 minutes instead of 2 hours. Trellis reduces evaluation write-up time by approximately 85%, giving you the time to invest in the coaching conversations that follow.
• Your framework, your values. Trellis works with Danielson, Marzano, or custom frameworks. If your school has its own definition of teaching excellence, Trellis adapts to it.
• Accreditation-ready documentation. Structured, longitudinal evaluation data that's organized and accessible when accreditation reviews require it.
• Human control throughout. Every piece of feedback is reviewed and approved by you before reaching a teacher. Trellis enhances your professional judgment — it never replaces it.

Trellis is FERPA compliant, TrustEd Apps certified, and never trains AI on your school's data.

Pricing: The SITE plan at $4,500 per school per year is designed for individual schools. For a school evaluating 40-60 teachers, that works out to $75-$112 per teacher annually — less than a single substitute day.

Schedule a 20-minute demo to see whether Trellis matches your standard.

FAQ

We're a small school with only 20-30 teachers. Is evaluation software worth it?

The feedback quality challenge is the same whether you evaluate 20 teachers or 200. If your administrators are spending hours on write-ups that end up generic, or if evaluation quality varies depending on who's doing the writing, a tool like Trellis addresses that directly. The GROW plan ($1,500/admin/year) is sized for smaller schools where one or two administrators handle all observations.

How does Trellis handle the unique context of independent school teaching?

Trellis works from your observation notes, so it reflects whatever you see and value in your classrooms. If your school prioritizes Socratic discussion, project-based learning, or student-led inquiry — and those are the moments you capture in your notes — that's what appears in the feedback. The tool adapts to your school's identity because it starts with your observations, not a generic template.

Can Trellis work alongside our current evaluation process?

Yes. Most private schools adopting Trellis keep their existing evaluation workflow and add Trellis to the feedback-writing step. If you currently use Google Docs, observation forms, or a simple database, Trellis-generated feedback can be copied into whatever system you use for documentation and teacher access.

What about teacher privacy and data security?

Trellis is FERPA compliant and TrustEd Apps certified. Teacher evaluation data is stored securely and never used to train AI models. You maintain full control of your data, and it can be deleted completely if you discontinue the service. For schools where teacher data sensitivity is a concern with faculty or board members, these protections are documented and auditable.