Aldine ISD Scales Tiered Literacy Strategy with Amira
The Challenge
When Dr. LaTonya M. Goffney took the helm of Aldine ISD as superintendent in 2018, she knew that improving literacy outcomes for Aldine’s students would be one of the biggest challenges she and her leadership would face. Despite having committed teachers and a strong instructional foundation, student reading levels remained well below where they needed to be, especially in the early grades.
To address this, district leaders developed a research-based literacy framework focused on foundational skills. They studied national research and investigated success stories from other large urban districts to develop their own literacy framework.
“We wanted to think about how we are going to build background knowledge,” Goffney said. “How are we going to build foundational knowledge? How are we going to make sure we have a systematic approach to literacy?”
The framework guided Tier 1 adoption and helped sustain instruction through COVID. But as schools emerged from the pandemic, leaders turned their attention to growing disparities within grade levels. While Tier 1 instruction remained strong, two key challenges came into focus: How were disparities being addressed when students weren’t learning? And how could the district build coherence across the system while prioritizing fluency in the early grades, K–2?
“We had the framework in place, the high-quality instructional materials, and training. But one of the areas that we needed a lot of support in was to know exactly what foundational skills our students might need in order to move their reading along more quickly. We saw that Amira could really fill that need,” Dr. Faviola Cantu, Aldine’s Chief Academic Officer.
The Solution
District-Level Strategies & Expectations
Strong endorsements from superintendent peers, combined with Amira’s proven results, captured the attention of Goffney and her team. Aldine’s success with Tier 1 coherence guided their decision to implement Amira with the same consistency and clarity, this time as a central component of Tier 2 and 3 instruction.
“We were clear that every student had a minimum number of minutes reading with Amira,” Goffney said. “It wasn't negotiable, it wasn't something that you could opt into or opt out of, it was expected. Once we set those expectations, we were seeing gains not only at the end of the year, but also throughout the year on our own assessments.”
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Teacher Support & Mindset Shift
Aldine leadership was deliberate about the rollout: they made sure they knew the Amira program “inside and out” to support school personnel, and were intentional when giving teachers the “why” behind the structured implementation. Even teachers who had hesitations about Amira’s AI came to see that Amira enhanced their ability to serve each of their students, increasing opportunities to practice and build fluency as well as time for small group instruction.
The program structures, both those inherent to Amira and those designed by the district, also served Aldine’s teachers, especially those teaching literacy in STAAR testing years, third grade and up.
Cantú emphasized that while a systematic approach was essential, Amira’s ability to deliver individualized instruction based on each student’s literacy needs was equally critical to success. Both Amira’s built-in capabilities and the district’s implementation gave teachers, particularly those in STAAR-tested grades as well as third grade and up, concrete strategies to address foundational skill development with precision.
Teachers in upper elementary grades, “by and large, aren’t trained to work on foundational skills with our students,” Executive Director of Literacy and Social Studies Jacqueline Beas said. “We do have students who make it up to third grade and beyond without foundational skills. Amira gives these students a place where they could go and get these lessons without teachers having to be trained right off the bat, while we worked on getting the teachers trained.”
Beas also highlighted the Amira intervention strategies available at teachers’ fingertips, geared for small group instruction. “That was one of the bigger changes in upper-level elementary,” Beas said. “Being able to address those foundation skills while the teacher is able to completely focus on the rest of Scarborough’s Rope.”
Building Proficient Readers in Two Languages
This intentional implementation of Amira extended beyond English literacy development. “We are a biliteracy district, so it was really important to have a tool that supported our students in both English and Spanish,” Cantu said. “Where we would utilize Amira, we made sure to include time for both languages.” Teachers and leaders noticed students were much more eager to practice reading aloud, speaking, and listening to Amira, whether in English or Spanish.
The Outcomes
Aldine recorded the largest STAAR growth in Region 4, outpacing peer districts across the Houston area. Almost all grade levels that used Amira exceeded typical growth on the MAP test, with students using Amira consistently showing above-average growth on the MAP assessment, and K–2 fluency gains were particularly strong—directly tied to daily use of Amira.
The transparency and precision with which Aldine implemented Amira have led to significant reading growth. In particular, student fluency “has shot up,” according to Beas. “That was what we really targeted in K-2.”
The thoughtful implementation of Amira provided other opportunities and efficiencies across the district.
Students now often use Amira outside of school, which no doubt helped with overall literacy achievement. “The population that we serve needs as much time and as many opportunities as possible to be able to communicate with confidence and practice fluency,” Goffney said. With the use of Amira in and out of school, “I'm really excited to see what that means for our district as these students enter into the upper grades.”
Whether during the school day or outside of school, students’ engagement with Amira has become part of streamlined reporting to inform instruction across the district.
“In the past, teachers had to take this information by hand, where Amira takes it in, and it puts out a report that tells you exactly what the trends are in your classroom,” Beas describes the improvement in reporting. “This has made planning for small group instruction a lot easier, a lot more effective and efficient, and it's improved planning for trends across campuses and our district.”
“Ultimately, it's our amazing teachers, the work that they embrace the standard of instructional excellence, they embraced Amira, and I appreciate them for buying in and for doing this work on behalf of our students, because we are seeing great growth,” Cantù said. “That always just makes us really happy to see how our students are making growth and making these gains.”
See how your district can use Amira to develop foundational literacy skills, accelerate fluency, and consistently inform tier 2 and tier 3 instruction across every classroom.
