Questions teachers and schools ask

Notegrade shows you how each essay was written: minutes spent writing, paste attempts, and large blocks of text that appeared at once. We are also adding a signal about likely AI use and a check for similarity to classmates’ essays, which teachers can turn on for a class. Each one comes with the reasons behind it.

All of this is a signal for you, never proof. Students never see it, and it is never used to grade. What it means is your call.

No. Students write on a plain page with no AI tools, and paste is turned off for everyone. They can still move text around inside their own essay. Before they start, each student reads what is recorded, in four short lines.

Notegrade saves the essay on the Chromebook as the student types and sends it to Notegrade every few seconds. The student signs in with their school Google account on another computer and picks up from the last save. The clock keeps running, so you can open that student’s options on the live roster and add 5 or 10 minutes.

For an assignment without a class, where students type their name, press Let back in on the student’s row first.

Students keep typing. The page says “Offline. Saved on this Chromebook.” and sends the essay when the connection comes back. Notegrade still accepts saves for a minute after time runs out. If a Chromebook is offline longer than that, the essay is submitted with the last version Notegrade received.

Set a student’s accommodations once on the class roster, such as time and a half, and they apply to every essay. During a session you can add minutes for one student or 10 minutes for everyone. When you end the period, students with extended time keep writing, nobody new can join, and the session closes when they finish.

Other accommodations are dictation, read aloud, spell check always on, and hiding the timer. Accommodations are never sent along when Notegrade drafts scores.

You choose for each assignment, and it is on by default. Spell check only underlines misspelled words. There are no grammar or AI suggestions. You can also turn spell check on for one student as an accommodation.

No. Draft scores and suggested deductions are visible only to you. Nothing reaches a student until you have reviewed the essay and returned it, and there is no setting that sends drafts to students on their own.

Before your first class set, you score three sample essays with your own rubric, the way you would norm with your department. You never see a suggested score while you do it. Notegrade then uses your scored essays as examples every time it drafts scores with that rubric, and shows you the criteria where its drafts and your scores still differ.

You do. Every suggested deduction points to the words it is about and gives one reason. You accept or reject each one, type a different score for any criterion, and add your own notes. The essay counts as reviewed only after you have gone through it.

The teacher who owns the class sees the essays, the scores and the writing record. Each student sees their own essay. There are no school or district accounts yet, so nobody else signs in to Notegrade and sees them. We do not sell student data, and there are no ads.

No. Student essays are never used to train AI models. When Notegrade drafts scores, the essay is processed inside Notegrade’s own cloud account in the United States and is not kept by the company that makes the model. Student names and accommodations are not sent. The privacy page lists every company that processes data for Notegrade.

Delete one student from that student’s page, or a whole class from the class page. Either one is permanent and happens right away. To delete a teacher account or all of a school’s data, ask us: we delete it within 60 days and confirm in writing, and it is gone from backups 14 days after that.

In Notegrade’s own Amazon Web Services account in the United States, encrypted in transit and at rest. The security page has the details district IT staff ask for.

Notegrade runs in a web browser, so there is nothing to install. Students need a Chromebook or laptop with a current browser. We build and test the writing page for school Chromebooks first. A phone screen is too small for a timed essay, so we do not recommend one.

With their school Google account. You paste your roster of names and school emails, and Notegrade checks the email Google confirms against it. Personal Google accounts do not work. Notegrade receives the student’s email address and name from Google, never the password. Teachers sign in with an email and password for now.

Not yet. You add a roster by pasting it from a spreadsheet, and the gradebook exports a CSV file for your school’s gradebook.

Nothing for now. Notegrade is free while we pilot it with teachers, and schools will hear from us before any price. See pricing.

We build to WCAG 2.1 AA. Notegrade is built for keyboard use, the writing page works with dictation and at 200% zoom, and teachers can turn on read aloud for a student. The accessibility page lists what we have done, what we know is missing, and how to report a problem.