Professional development for English departments
Your rubric, read
the same way in
every classroom.
Two classes in the same grade should not feel like different courses. It should not be about which teacher you get. Optimize gives a department one shared exercise: everyone scores the same essays against your rubric. If some people attend more closely to citations than others, you know what professional development they need.
We are running first pilots now.
Request a department pilot- Every score in a report is one a teacher gave, never a prediction
- Teachers see their own results before the department does
- No rankings, no score for any teacher, no use in employment decisions
How a round works
One shared set of essays. One honest conversation.
STEP 01
Your rubric, your criteria
Thesis, body paragraphs, citations, whatever your department already uses, with the level descriptors you already wrote.
STEP 02
Everyone scores the same essays
The chair picks a small set of sample essays, each labeled with the grade level it should be judged against. Every teacher scores them criterion by criterion, with no AI numbers on screen.
STEP 03
See what to coach, and for whom
Criterion by criterion, who attends to a thesis, who attends to citations, where the standard holds from one classroom to the next. That is evaluation as professional development. The essays behind each disagreement become the next PD session.
What the department sees
Who needs what kind of professional development.
Because everyone scored the same essays, a difference in scores points at how the rubric is read, not at different students or different assignments. If one person is closer on citations and another on the thesis, those are two different coaching hours, not the same workshop. Teachers appear as Teacher A, B and C unless they choose to be named, and every view says how many essays and teachers it rests on.
Illustration · not real teachers or results
Evaluation as professional development
This is how you evaluate practice: who attends to which criteria, so coaching is specific. Teachers see their own results next to the group range before the department sees anything, and decide whether to be named. Nothing here produces a score for a teacher, a ranking, or material for an employment decision.
The AI transcribes marked papers and sorts margin comments by your criteria, and teachers check that sorting before it appears anywhere. Student work is used only as the essays everyone scores, with the school’s permission and with names removed.
Pilots
Start with one department.
A first round fits inside one professional development session. Leave your school email and we will set one up with you.