The reports she used to avoid now take two minutes each.
Kelly runs a 520-student elementary school in Philadelphia and owes four teacher evaluations every week. Writing the reports used to cost her at least half an hour apiece, always after everything else was done. It now costs her two or three minutes — and the hours go into the conversations the evaluation is actually for.
The part of the job she would do anything to avoid.
Four evaluations a week, each one at least thirty minutes of writing, and another thirty to sixty on the coaching plan behind it. The day it has to fit into contains roughly fifty interruptions, so the reports went where they always go: the end of the list.
That is not a discipline problem. A process that can only be done well in a quiet stretch of time, handed to someone whose day has no quiet stretch in it, produces exactly this result. It got heavy enough that Kelly questioned how long she could keep doing the job.
“I literally will do everything else to avoid typing them up. I can’t stand it. It’s the least favorite part of my job.”
“I’m expected to be head of instruction, but I’m the operations manager, the facilities manager, the banker, sometimes the nurse and sometimes the counselor.”
Her notes go in. A finished draft comes out.
Kelly observes the way she always has. Swiftscore turns those notes into a full evaluation aligned to the priorities her school already works from, with the strengths and the growth areas written out, and it does it with little left for her to edit.
The feedback is specific enough to hand a teacher as-is. On a writing lesson it told her the questioning was staying at recall, and gave her the alternative in the teacher’s own context: ask how a student can use evidence to build a point in their essay, rather than what the answer was.
- A full report drafted from her observation notes, aligned to her school’s priorities
- Strengths and growth areas named specifically, not in general terms
- A coaching plan in weekly steps, stored so a teacher’s growth shows across the year
The report got fast. The conversation got more time.
The writing went from at least thirty minutes a teacher to two or three, and coaching prep from two hours to fifteen minutes. That is the paperwork half of evaluation, and it is the only half worth doing quickly.
The other half is the part that actually moves a teacher: the debrief, the follow-up, the next walkthrough. Kelly did not speed that up. She gave it the hours the reports used to take.
What Kelly talks about is not the time, though. It is that the coaching plans are usable: small, specific steps a teacher can take this week, instead of a paragraph of encouragement that changes nothing. And she has since written more evaluations than anyone else on the platform.
“I don’t know how you guys got it that good.”
“This is really, really bite-sized and specific. And this is exactly what I would want this person to do.”
“This means more time. I can be in different places. More opportunities to be in the classroom and other areas of the school.”
I would be knocking down your door saying, “Where’s Swiftscore?” If the district won’t pay for it, I’ll pay for it myself.
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