Dougherty County School System
How Amira is helping Dougherty County elementary schools meet each student’s literacy needs and deliver Science of Reading instruction.
The Challenge
Located in a rural area of southwest Georgia, Dougherty County School System serves just over 13,000 K-12 students across 13 elementary schools and eight middle and high schools. Approximately 70% of students come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, and many enter school already behind in foundational reading skills.
Early literacy has always been a top priority in Dougherty County. But the COVID-19 pandemic set back the district’s progress. Donna Gleaton, K-5 English Language Arts Coordinator, shares that when Dougherty County’s students returned to school after remote learning, reading skill deficits had grown significantly.
While the deficits were evident, teachers lacked the tools and data to address them. Without a standardized method of diagnosing reading challenges and measuring progress, teachers relied on volunteer tutors and running records, both of which varied in consistency and quality.
Compounding Dougherty County’s literacy challenges was a shortage of qualified teachers, a problem that persists today. Operating as a charter since the 2016-17 school year, the district has the flexibility to hire charter waiver teachers. These unconventional teachers aren’t required to have state teaching credentials and, as a result, often don't have training in the Science of Reading.
To support their non-traditional teachers and support students’ reading growth, Dougherty County needed a more reliable and consistent method of assessing students’ reading skills and monitoring their growth.
Our teachers knew students were having trouble, but they didn’t always know how to pinpoint the problem. When a child couldn’t read, the default explanation was either phonics or comprehension. There was no deeper diagnosis, no clear next step.
District Demographics
K-12 Enrollment
13,095
Minorities
95.8%
Economically Disadvantaged
72%
Disabilities
11.5%
The Solution
The district first discovered Amira at a national literacy symposium in early 2020. “I was skeptical at first,” Donna admits. “I’ve been a teacher for 31 years, and I was thinking, ‘How in the world is this going to be able to tell me if a child can say a word or not? What if they have a stutter or a dialect?’ But once we saw the demonstration, we knew we had to try it.”
The district began with a small pilot of Amira ISIP Assess and Amira Tutor at two of its elementary schools. Within a couple of weeks of starting the pilot, though, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down schools. Seeing Amira’s potential to support remote learning, Dougherty County quickly rolled it out to all K–2 students.
Since then, Dougherty County has been using Amira ISIP Assess for reading screening and to monitor students’ progress. The assessment is administered three times throughout the year and gives teachers clear, consistent data about their students’ reading development.
Dougherty County also uses Amira Tutor to provide 1:1 reading practice. Amira works with each student individually, listening as they read aloud and offering in-the-moment support with pronunciation, decoding, and fluency. “The younger ones light up when they hear Amira say their name,” Donna shares. “They don’t want to stop reading when time is up. They want to finish their story.”
Teachers use reports from Amira’s tutoring sessions to understand student’s individual needs. They receive the specific, Science of Reading-aligned data they need to understand exactly what’s holding a student back and put them on the track to reading mastery. Even teachers who are new to reading instruction are able to group students and differentiate instruction effectively and confidently.
“The combination of Amira and the Science of Reading training we’ve been doing in our district has really helped us produce growth and work towards closing reading achievement gaps.”
“The data speaks volumes. If Teacher A isn’t using Amira consistently and isn’t seeing the desired results, but Teacher B is using Amira with fidelity and is seeing strong results, the data speaks for itself.”
“Amira is like embedded professional development. It’s helped our teachers move from general instruction to more strategic, skill-based teaching.”
“The specificity of Amira’s reports has been a game changer. It doesn’t just say Phonics, for example, which is a broad category. It tells you if the student is struggling with vowels, blends, or something else entirely.”
The Outcomes
Today, over 4,200 students across Dougherty County’s 13 elementary schools read with Amira each week. In the 2024-25 school year, Dougherty students read 664,202 stories with Amira and logged more than 3.5 million minutes of reading practice, averaging 834 minutes per student.
The reading practice and insights Amira provides are paying off for Dougherty County. Mid-year assessment results showed that students who read with Amira for 30 minutes each week (the research-recommended dosage) demonstrated 24.2 weeks of reading growth in just 21 weeks of reading instruction.
Donna proudly shares that 75-80% of students are now on track with their expected reading growth. While this upward trajectory is the biggest win, having access to the data and knowing that reading growth is being consistently monitored have been essential pieces of the puzzle.
3.5 million
minutes spent practicing with Amira in the 2024-25 school year
664,202
stories read with Amira
during the 2024-25 school year
Today, over 4,200 students across Dougherty County’s 13 elementary schools read with Amira each week. In the 2024-25 school year, Dougherty students read 664,202 stories with Amira and logged more than 3.5 million minutes of reading practice, averaging 834 minutes per student.
The reading practice and insights Amira provides are paying off for Dougherty County. Mid-year assessment results showed that students who read with Amira for 30 minutes each week (the research-recommended dosage) demonstrated 24.2 weeks of reading growth in just 21 weeks of reading instruction.
Donna proudly shares that 75-80% of students are now on track with their expected reading growth. While this upward trajectory is the biggest win, having access to the data and knowing that reading growth is being consistently monitored have been essential pieces of the puzzle.
“We’ve used Amira for going on 5 years, and the products keep getting better every year. I’m excited about what’s coming next.”
For this school year, the district is planning a fresh training initiative and rolling out new goals, including some friendly competitions to see which school reads the most minutes or most stories. The district is doing training face-to-face with teachers. They’re also setting aside time for Amira training during their Summer Leadership Institute.
Donna explains, “It’s important to commit to training every couple of years, and to take a top-down approach. We can’t just train the teachers, we have to train the administrators who are responsible, too.”
Amira is helping Dougherty County School System
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Meet each student’s literacy needs
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Develop new teachers
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Deliver 1:1 tutoring
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Differentiate instruction
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Monitor reading growth consistently