Amira Learning Awarded $3M Literacy Grant to Bring Proven A.I.-Powered Reading Tutor to Thousands of Elementary School Students

Amira Learning, the first-of-its-kind voice A.I.-powered reading tutor for children, announces today that it has secured a $3M grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES). The funds will be used to further Amira’s mission of supporting the 66% of American children who are not proficient in reading, with a specific focus on children in disadvantaged and underserved communities. 

The literacy gap in the U.S. is massive. More than half (54%) of American adults (130 million Americans between the ages of 16 and 74) read below a sixth-grade level. About 43 million Americans—nearly one in five adults—read below a third-grade level. Studies show that students who aren’t proficient readers by third grade are 4 times more likely to drop out of high school, have a 60% lower employment rate, and experience a 34% decrease in lifetime earnings. Amira’s goal is to solve this problem by providing students with an always-available, infinitely patient, highly trained reading tutor. 

Provided by IES, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education, Amira has been awarded $3M in funding over the next three years. Amira was one of just four recipients of an IES grant as part of the Institute’s Transformative Research in the Education Sciences Grants Program.  Amira was the only non-university research team to receive an award. 

“Childhood illiteracy is a large problem that will require creative and scalable solutions like Amira. We’re looking forward to seeing the results of Amira’s IES-funded pilot program in New York and how that work will improve the lives of children in our community,” says Mark Schneider, Director of the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences.

“We’re honored to have the opportunity to work with IES, and partner with SRI International, the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, and others,” said Mark Angel, CEO and Co-Founder of Amira Learning. “Our mission is to make every child a masterful reader and this new grant, as well as continued support from our partners and educational professionals, will help us make good on this promise.”    

The IES grant will support Amira’s Reading Together project that was created to foster the development of scalable and personalized tools to overcome the intergenerational cycle of reading difficulties. Amira will work with kindergarten-aged students, their families, and teachers in New York City to develop holistic reading support programs that can be implemented at home and in the classroom. The Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy will provide literacy and reading technical assistance, subject matter expertise, and serve in the role of advisor for the project.  The goal of the program is to produce actionable research that will strengthen the relationship between families and schools to improve literacy among emerging readers.   

In addition to the work through the IES grant, Amira is working with Reading Rescue to support human tutors in NYC and Washington, D.C., made possible with support from the Benedict Silverman Foundation in New York and CityBridge Foundation in D.C.  "Amira has been a valuable partner in my advisory work with Reading Rescue, especially during the pandemic,” said Katharine Pace Miles, Ph.D and Assistant Professor at Brooklyn College. “We needed a valid and reliable assessment built for the online environment. By using Amira, we dramatically reduced the amount of assessment training time in our professional development sessions. This allows the tutors to focus on the Reading Rescue program, instead of on how to administer and score an assessment. Also, it’s become a critical part of removing human bias in scoring across our program.”

Amira’s A.I.-powered reading tutor uses established methods to improve literacy in young learners and is based on more than 20 years of research at the A.I. and Robotics Lab at Carnegie Mellon University. It is the only intelligent tutoring software to reach 96% accuracy in a test environment and research has shown that it is as effective as a human tutor at improving reading skills. 

In recognition of the company’s continued innovation, Amira’s iOS app, ’Amira & the StoryCraft’ was named one of TIME’s 100 Best Inventions of 2021. Only one of three inventions honored in the Education category, the list features 100 products and services that change the way we live, play, work, and think about the future. 

Learn more about how Amira is dismantling America’s literacy crisis at amiralearning.com. 

About Amira Learning

Amira Learning has developed the world’s first intelligent reading assistant that encourages children to read aloud, assesses their skills, and tutors them to accelerate reading mastery. Founded by a team of former engineers and executives from Pearson, IBM, ACT, and Renaissance, and built from a foundation of 20 years of research from Carnegie Mellon University, the company’s mission is to help close the 32 million person literacy gap in America by creating personalized and engaging reading experiences for children.

Headquartered in San Francisco, Amira has raised more than $20M from investors, including Owl Ventures, Vertical Venture Partners, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Authentic Ventures, Outcomes Collective, Google Assistant Fund, Amazon Alexa Fund, ReThink Education, and GSV AcceleraTE, and is currently being used by more than 1,800 schools, reaching almost 400,000 students across the country. To learn more about Amira, visit amiralearning.com.

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