Amira Trust Center

Parents provide consent via their “educational agencies”: the State department of education and the local school district. Amira operates under contract with school districts or states which are governed by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). This federal legislation enables districts to designate third-parties, such as assessment providers, to collect necessary data on behalf of the school. Most districts utilize hundreds of contractors, such as Amira, without explicit notification to parents.

34 C.F.R. § 99.31(a)(1) is the legal mechanism that makes this possible while preserving FERPA’s important protections. Specifically, districts can permit data disclosure to a contractor that:

• Performs an institutional service or function for which the school would otherwise use employees
• Operates under the school’s direct control with respect to education records
• Is bound by FERPA’s redisclosure limitations

Amira fully qualifies.

Amira voice recordings are stored exclusively in Amira’s data hosting facility. For American students, these are U.S. located facilities, in Ohio. For Canadian students, the hosting facility is located in Montreal. There is no other location for audio. Storage is never out of Amira’s direct control.

Student data, such as voice recordings, do not belong to Amira and can be deleted at any time, at the request of the district. In any case, voice recordings are only stored for as long and no longer than a state agency or a school district requires to support educators with early literacy instruction practice. Amira can, however, implement a protocol where no voice data is ever stored after the initial recording for purposes of diagnostics and intervention.

Voice recordings are never provided to any commercial third party, which would be a violation of both the law and Amira contracts with school districts. Amira voice data has never been provided to the federal government.

Amira has one subprocessor for audio: the data center infrastructure operator (AWS). This subprocessor is contractually barred from accessing, backing up or otherwise utilizing the files. Even if they violated this contract, the audio is encrypted and would be unusable.

No. Biometric data (opens in a new tab) means measuring a physical or behavioral characteristic, such as a fingerprint or a voiceprint, in order to establish or verify who someone is. Amira does not collect it.

Amira does record students reading aloud, and saves those audio files for teachers to review. Amira analyzes that speech to judge whether words were read correctly. It does not analyze it to determine who is speaking, and it does not create any artifact used to authenticate a person’s identity or provide a basis for identification.

• Amira does not use voice as a basis for logging in students or identifying them in any way.
• Amira does not produce, use or save any form of voiceprint or other biometric identifier.
• Amira does not generate psychographic profiles.
• Amira does not store social security numbers or otherwise create risk of identity theft.

Some state legislation defines biometric information as including “voice prints” used to identify a specific individual. Those statutes, such as Texas BCC 552.054, expressly exclude photographs, a video or audio recording, or data generated from a video or audio recording. Amira does not create or use voice prints.

Amira extends and enhances the teacher’s expertise to help students become stronger readers in the same way an ultrasound machine helps doctors gather deeper data to save lives.

Everything Amira does is intended to reinforce great teaching by professional educators. The teacher remains responsible for the student’s broader instructional experience, relationships, judgment, and classroom decisions. Amira provides structured evidence and practice within an educator-led environment.

• Amira helps teachers to identify students with reading risk and guide them toward the most effective support.
• Amira helps educators to group students to deliver effective small group interventions.
• Amira helps teachers to connect student skill gaps to the specific curriculum a teacher is using, to personalize instruction for each student’s needs.
• Amira provides additional 1:1 practice opportunities to reinforce a teacher’s specific instruction.
• Amira provides short bursts of tutoring to students, enabling teachers to deliver precious small group instruction in a station rotation model.

Amira is not a chatbot. Amira is incapable of carrying on everyday conversations, building relationships with students, or responding to questions outside the student’s assigned reading experience. Amira has zero resemblance to chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini, Khanmigo, Claude, and other AI chat software.

Teachers can perform stronger assessment because Amira brings better data from listening to students read aloud. Amira’s accuracy should not be compared to teacher accuracy, it should be compared to assessing with paper and pencil.

Amira provides deep insight. Just as an ultrasound gives the doctor a new way to see and diagnose, Amira gives the teacher a new way to see the reading brain, providing data such as identifying specific phonemic patterns.

Amira is consistent. Amira makes the same judgment using the same protocol employing identical approaches to scoring for every single student. This enables comparability. Amira performs the same assessment protocol millions of times a year without the slightest variation.

Amira minimizes the loss of instructional time. Doctors don’t take your weight or your blood pressure. Why? They are likely the “most qualified” to do so. But doctors have better things to do than conduct blood tests (that’s what Labs are for) or push weights on a scale. Similarly, teachers shouldn’t be spending 5% of their time mechanically scoring assessments. Students need teachers to help them learn, not mark up forms.

Amira is the only reading intervention that has been recognized for high-quality evidence of impact on both the Evidence for ESSA and What Works Clearinghouse sites. Many independent academic studies have found that students reading with Amira grow 25% or more faster than non-using peers. Independent evaluations from leading universities and State Departments of Education, covering specific dosage and grade-level metrics, are available upon request.

Amira has been vetted and approved by more than 30 State Departments of Education. 14 have adopted Amira as an element of the state literacy strategy. Five states have conducted research on Amira’s efficacy, with all finding that Amira accelerated growth by more than 20%.

Read the research →

• In a review conducted by the State of California, Amira was the only screener able to demonstrate statistical lack of bias.
• In a review conducted by Georgia College for the State of Georgia, Amira scored highest for equity.
• In research certified by the Texas Education Agency, Amira helped black students, ELLs and students from disadvantaged households more than any other groups.

Amira is independently audited by three separate firms: financially, for security and for compliance to our contractual commitments. Amira carries substantial cyber-liability insurance.