Meet Amira, the AI tutor helping Louisiana students improve their reading skills (2024)

The classroom is noisy, but the kids aren’t misbehaving.

At a school in Gretna, about a dozen first graders are sitting at their desks, laptops open and headsets on. The setup makes them look like tiny telemarketers.

“Ready, set, start,” flashes on their screens, followed by the first line of a story on their reading level.

As words appear, the students read them aloud on their own. But there’s a voice coaching them when they get stuck. It’s an AI-powered reading tutor named Amira.

The technology uses artificial intelligence to try to figure out why the student is struggling. Then it runs through dozens of tested tutoring strategies and picks one.

When a little girl named Jaclyn stalls on the word map, Amira jumps in.

“There are three sounds in this word,” Amira says. Three boxes and three red balls appear on the screen, one for each part of the word.

Amira tells Jaclyn to drag the balls into the boxes one at a time while saying each sound. Together, they sound it out — “m-a-p.”

“Super. Let’s keep going,” Amira says.

It seems like artificial intelligence is everywhere these days, from ChatGPT to the latest version of Google’s Gemini. These tools are impressive and can feel a little scary.

While AI has raised concerns about cheating, some educators are excited about the technology.

Meet Amira, the AI tutor helping Louisiana students improve their reading skills (1)

Aubri Juhasz

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Tutoring is one of the most effective ways to catch kids up, but quality tutors are expensive — and in short supply. Gretna Park Elementary School principal Michelle Montagnino says before Amira, there just weren’t enough.

English is a second language for more than half of the school’s students, which makes learning to read even more difficult.

Montagnino’s school started using Amira last year to tutor those students. The tool is also fluent in Spanish and can tutor kids in both languages.

In the first grade classroom, a little girl named Allison watches a video of someone sounding out the word mug, another tutoring strategy.

She watches how the person’s lips are moving to form the sounds.

“M-u-g,” Allison says, and the word “Bueno” appears on the screen.

Montagnino says kids who used Amira regularly after school went up an entire proficiency level.

“This fills in the gaps so much better,” she says, “And it’s fun.”

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Louisiana has invested in tutoring to boost reading scores and recover learning lost during the pandemic. It’s one of a few states where reading scores have returned to pre-pandemic levels.

Schools must give students who are struggling extra support under new laws. And there’s more state funding to help pay for it.

Amira is just one of several reading tutors on the market. While some are relatively new, Amira’s roots go back to the 1990s, when researchers in the science of reading and AI started developing the technology at Carnegie Mellon University.

About five years ago, Amira Learning, a for-profit company, was founded to bring the technology into schools, according to its chief impact officer Joe Siedlecki. Now, more than 2 million children are using Amira to practice reading, he says.

While the research on computer-based tutoring is inconclusive, Siedlecki points to independent studies that he says show Amira’s success.

One study found students in Savannah, Georgia who used the tool frequently saw their reading scores improve. Another in Utah, showed similar gains for kids who used adaptive reading programs, including Amira, for the recommended amount of time.

The problem in both studies, was the majority of kids did not read with Amira for the recommended time, 30 minutes a week for at least 30 weeks. In Savannah, roughly 60 percent of students participated in 14 weeks of practice sessions, or less.

Montagnino says this school year, all kids at Johnson Elementary will use the tool several times a week, for more than 30 minutes total, as part of a newly expanded state program.

Meet Amira, the AI tutor helping Louisiana students improve their reading skills (3)

Aubri Juhasz

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WWNO

Adam DiBenedetto, a former teacher in Tangipahoa Parish, says Amira worked for his students and it made him a better teacher.

“It was very helpful to have Amira kind of walk alongside me,” he says.

The tool is constantly collecting data for teachers. DiBenedetto says it showed him where his third graders needed help and the next steps he should take.

He now works for Louisiana’s Department of Education and is in charge of bringing Amira into more classrooms through the state’s expanded pilot.

About 100,000 students will have access to Amira for the next two years through the program, four times as many as last year. The state is using $3.6 million of its federal COVID relief money to pay for the program, at no cost to schools. It’s also making funding available for school districts to purchase additional licenses, at $17 a student.

Participating schools receive ongoing support from Amira Learning to onboard students and train teachers, says DiBenedetto.

The state also shared general AI guidance with all districts at the start of the school year.

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By the time the pilot is over, “I think we’re going to see some interesting impacts,” says DiBenedetto. “We’ll definitely have some data to make prudent decisions in the future.”

Like Utah, Louisiana plans to hire an outside group to study its program, he says.

Bree Dusseault, with the Center for Reinventing Public Education, says it sounds like Louisiana is taking the right steps to successfully bring AI into schools.

"Just like curriculum, any tool is only as strong as it is implemented and understood," she says.

Regardless of potential missteps, Dusseault says schools can’t afford to skip out on AI. They need to start using the technology now or risk being left behind.

“I think teachers will need to think of this as a tool in their toolkit, but it’s not going to be the solution,” she says.

Experts caution that technology isn’t a replacement for teachers — or even all tutors. It can’t build relationships with students like humans can.

Montagnino, the principal in Gretna, says for that reason, she was skeptical at first.

“I mean, I’m old school. I still believe people, especially with reading for little kids. That’s where it’s at,” she says. “But this, to supplement good science of reading instruction in the classroom? This is great.”

And it’s likely to get better.

Because just like kids are learning from Amira, it’s learning from them too.

Meet Amira, the AI tutor helping Louisiana students improve their reading skills (2024)
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