Artificial intelligence can scale assessment of student-generated scientific models, but valid educational use requires algorithms to identify features that meaningfully represent the intended learning construct. This study compares foundation and supervised computer vision approaches for evaluating learning progression (LP)-aligned evidence in approximately 1,600 high-school students’ electroscope models. Grounding DINO combined with the Segment Anything Model (SAM) was used for zero-shot detection without task-specific labeled training data, whereas a CustomCharge convolutional neural network (CNN) was trained on human-scored models. Both approaches were evaluated against expert scoring across 13 LP-aligned analytic categories. Grounding DINO+SAM achieved higher Cohen’s 𝜅 in 12 of 13 categories, with strong performance across both charge- and force-related evidence. Categories involving less frequent or more complex cross-scenario representations remained comparatively challenging. Findings demonstrate complementary strengths of foundation and supervised approaches and illustrate how LPs can provide a theoretically grounded framework for developing and validating AI assessment of scientific models.