Washington Borough Builds a System of Reading Success with Amira
The Challenge
When Frank Esposito took over the superintendent role in Washington Borough, NJ in 2023, the district was under an improvement plan from the state. As Esposito and his team reviewed the complex web of challenges across the district, they identified a missing link in their system for reading success - a universal, reliable, and instructionally meaningful screener of students' reading abilities.
Washington Borough had previously used the DRA for students who were identified as struggling readers, but “there really wasn't something that was a standardized, systematic way for our district to collect information quickly and have it be standardized to understand what's happening with the student that could be suspected of having dyslexia,” Dr. Samantha Bahna, Supervisor and of Instruction & Innovation said. “We had no way to report that, and then to be able to pinpoint specific areas that were of concern.”
As with many districts across New Jersey, the team faced significant pressure to ensure that any solution they brought in was tried, true, and research-backed. Evaluating solutions that included the rapidly growing use of AI added to the complexity: where could these innovations increase the efficacy of instruction and the efficiency of data collection and analysis without compromising on student privacy or teacher autonomy?
Compounding the district’s needs at the time, there was no budget for interventionists. Each classroom teacher was serving as the only source of differentiation and intervention for students. This stretched teachers’ capacity thin, and district leadership knew any programs they implemented would need to address this capacity issue head-on.
“We were looking at ways to ‘clone’ the teacher, and to have a micro-intervention, not only unidirectional, but bidirectional,” Esposito said. “That was what attracted me to Amira so much.”
With decades of research aligned with the Science of Reading, Amira Learning combined deep expertise with innovative technology to fit what Washington Borough was looking for: a universal screening and intervention tool for their young readers.
For Esposito’s team, Amira’s standout feature was the ability to hear students’ oral fluency and provide specifically targeted interventions on a larger scale. According to Maria Stein, the district’s Literacy Coach, Amira’s “micro-interventions offer differentiation that the students need, so on the spot, in the moment, they'll get an intervention that will be tailored or suited to what they're in need of.”
The Solution
The district was new to using AI for student screening and intervention, which brought a wave of familiar questions from parents - especially around data privacy and how student voices would be processed. With clear communication and Amira’s research-backed safety protocols, the district built trust and got families on board. But that success brought the next hurdle: bringing the AI into classrooms and earning teacher buy-in.
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Data-Inspired Implementation
Esposito and his team took a practical, data-informed approach to supporting teachers with their implementation of Amira. The district highlighted usage numbers by grade level for all products in use across the district on a weekly basis, which helped influence the minimum of 30 minutes of usage each week for every student. As teachers and students became more comfortable with Amira’s program, this open usage data prompted competitions and became a core part of frequent, low-stakes data meetings that highlight instructional success without the pressure of formal performance reviews.
“Our cadence of accountability allowed our teachers to be proud, rather than to feel attacked or singled out,” Esposito said. “We were showing it more as a team score, so they were celebrating that they hit the right target.”
“Once teachers realized this is going to level the playing field for all of our kids, it's not going to replace us, it's going to work with us, that really allowed us to help have greater conversations to let them see that it is a facilitative support,” Bahna said. “We followed that technology acceptance model.”
A Virtuous Cycle of Curriculum Alignment
The impact of Amira Learning on student learning and instruction in Washington Borough increased exponentially when the district adopted the Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) curriculum as its primary literacy program. With Amira’s deep alignment and correlation to CKLA, “that’s when the turning point happened,” Esposito said. “Amira paired with CKLA, and the buy-in exponentially increased. That was a game changer for us.”
District teachers are able to look at their students’ Skills Status Reports from Amira with direct connections to their curriculum: whether students have already received Tier 1 instruction for a certain skill, how students are performing on each skill they have taught or reviewed in their curriculum progression, and which students are in need of additional intervention to demonstrate mastery of those skills. That level of specific insight even enhanced the fidelity of the implementation of the CKLA curriculum, Esposito and his team found.
“Teachers can rest assured that when they are planning their Tier 1 lessons, students will also be introduced to those same types of skills in their Amira lessons, and that can reinforce what they're doing in the classroom,” Stein said. “If they can't see every student every day, one-on-one, they can rest assured that at least Amira will be covering the same skills that they'll need in the Tier 1 literacy program.”
Stein noted that Amira also supported a more seamless transition from classroom instruction to intervention, especially once the district added literacy interventionists. Between the core curriculum, aligned intervention curriculum and Amira, “everything is interconnected and building off of each other, and they all work together to create that whole picture of a student’” Stein said. “Amira can be very helpful for our interventionists as well, not just the classroom teachers.”
As a community, “our teachers bought in because of the curricular alignment, and we were having such good success with the implementation of the curriculum,” Esposito said. “That was really impactful in how accelerated the progress has been. We were thrilled.”
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Early Grade and English Learner Interventions
Two standout areas of the district’s success with Amira Learning have come with its youngest students as well as its second-language learners.
Bahna recognized “particularly in ed tech, not many [tools] are there to support early childhood literacy, specifically for K-3. That was something that led us to Amira, and gave us this chance to dig into what’s really going on with a specific tool. We were excited to step into that direction, and we haven’t looked back.”
With a sharp increase in the number of multilingual learners in Washington Borough, the team has also been pleased by Amira’s ability to level the playing field and provide a supportive environment for students who are fluent in Spanish as their English language skills grow. Even students who arrive mid-year with limited English proficiency are able to interact with Amira in Spanish alongside their English-speaking peers, which has helped students adapt more quickly to their new classrooms.
“One of the biggest things that I have seen in terms of its power for differentiation is the fact that it's authentic bilingual, not just translation,” Bahna said. “We can gauge that dyslexia risk based on their oral reading in Spanish, and it automatically determines their risk levels, which is something we were not capable of doing before Amira.”
The Outcomes
As part of a tightly woven fabric of literacy instruction and support in Washington Borough, Amira Learning has grown to be a crucial component of student performance in literacy.
“We know that our kids, in tandem with other resources and supports that they've received in our district, have grown twice as much by using this program, as well as receiving a core Tier 1 instruction that is aligned to the use of the skills that we see reflected in Amira,” Bahna said. “We saw absolutely, sincerely substantial growth by using Amira as a side-by-side facilitator. It has helped our faculty because it does give them more time for small group instruction instead of individual assessments or assignments.”
The ability to assess, identify, and make “micro-interventions” with students using Amira has strengthened instruction and outcomes overall. Amira has been “a wonderful tool for us to make that connection between listening to the students read and being able to then support them in the skills that they're struggling with,” Stein said.
“We're really, really proud of what we've done overall, Amira being a huge part of that, for sure,” Bahna said. “The evidence is in the capturing of the child's voice, demonstrating their understanding of the skill, or their ability to read. That, to me, is as powerful as you can get.”
On a district scale, data from Amira has been part of the biweekly literacy PLC meetings that have become conversations about student progress as well as the efficacy of the programs the district uses, allowing administrators to more confidently evaluate their entire instructional program and purchasing.
For Washington Borough, Amira remains a core part of their programs. It allows the district to implement “developmentally appropriate practices that are sound and grounded in research,” Bahna said. “So I think any of my colleagues in the field that are interested in looking at a platform that could be of value to teachers, as well as to help the bottom line in terms of growing students, we have a partner in that growth journey.”
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