Request a demo
First, so we send you somewhere useful.
Amira is adopted through school districts rather than by families, so a demo would not tell you much. To find out how Amira is used in your child’s school, contact your school or district office.
What happens when your child reads with AmiraYour information is used to respond to your demo request.
What Amira is allowed to do.
Every answer here is the same sentence we give a district in a procurement review, a parent on the phone, and a regulator. Change one and it changes everywhere at once.
Teachers around the world are using Amira right now to help students grow as readers: hearing words read aloud, catching reading challenges earlier than they otherwise would, and stepping in with the right support at the right moment. We take that responsibility seriously.
Amira has never experienced a data breach.
We have operated for years handling student data without a single incident, and the trust we have built with long-standing district partners rests on it. Words on a page are not enough, which is why this page links the documents rather than summarising them.
Peter Jungwirth, Chief Technology Officer
All twelve, in five areas, answered in full and in the open. Nothing here is behind a click.
Parents consent through their educational agencies: the state department of education and the local school district. Amira operates under contract with districts or states governed by FERPA, which lets a district designate a third party such as an assessment provider to collect data on its behalf. 34 C.F.R. § 99.31(a)(1) is the mechanism.
Amira voice recordings are stored only in Amira's own hosting facilities: in Ohio for students in the United States, and in Montreal for students in Canada. There is no other location, and storage is never outside Amira's direct control.
Retention is a district decision and Amira's default is not to retain. Where a district has made no election, practice audio is never saved and assessment audio is deleted within 48 hours of scoring. Retention is a single setting: no retention, deletion after 48 hours, at the weekend, at the end of each month, or at the end of the school year. A district may change its election in writing at any time, and may request deletion of its student audio whatever the setting. Amira completes deletion requests within 10 business days and confirms each one in writing. Participation in model improvement is a separate setting: turning retention off does not decline model improvement, and declining model improvement does not change retention.
Amira’s default is no retention: practice audio is never saved, and assessment audio is deleted within 48 hours of scoring. Districts may elect to keep it longer and can change that in writing at any time. Audio is encrypted, access-controlled and carries no student name or ID, and it is never backed up, so a deletion is complete when it runs. US student audio stays in the US, and a district may request deletion at any time.
No biometric identifier is created from a student’s voice. Amira never produces a voiceprint, a voice profile, or any other biometric identifier.
Amira does not use voice recordings directly to train models. We do not provide student data to others to build models. Amira utilizes only de-identified data to train our models. Participation in model improvement is a separate district setting from audio retention: turning retention off does not by itself decline model improvement, and declining it does not change the audio setting.
Amira extends a teacher's expertise rather than replacing it, the way an ultrasound gives a doctor a way to see. The teacher remains responsible for the student's instruction, relationships, judgement and classroom decisions. Amira provides structured evidence and practice inside an educator-led environment.
Amira is not a chatbot. It cannot hold everyday conversations, build relationships with students, or answer anything outside the assigned reading. It is functionally incapable of saying anything that has not been vetted by a human in advance, and it does one thing: give feedback on a student's reading.
Amira's accuracy is not the right comparison to a teacher's. The comparison is to assessing with paper and pencil. Amira brings deeper data from listening to a student read aloud, and the teacher assesses better for having it.
No, Amira does not drift. Drift is what happens when a model is left unchanged while the world moves on. A degenerative loop is the opposite: a model retraining constantly, and that retraining producing unintended and negative consequences. Neither describes Amira.
Amira Assess changes once, and only once, a year. The assessment model a student reads to in March is the identical, tested version deployed the previous August. Amira’s models cannot and do not retrain on student data in real time, and the scoring algorithm cannot change mid-year. Weights and item parameters are versioned and frozen. Updates are released once a year and are comprehensively validated against human-scored benchmarks before deployment.
Amira Tutor adapts, which is not the same as drifting. Tutor uses Amira’s mastery model to understand which reading skills a student has mastered and where the gaps are, so the help evolves as the student’s ability evolves. It mirrors the student’s progression rather than changing its own judgement. It cannot degenerate either: Amira never utters a word or takes an action that has not been reviewed and vetted by human experts. Amira is not generative AI, and its models do not create unreviewed content.
Amira is recognised for high-quality evidence of impact on both Evidence for ESSA and the What Works Clearinghouse.
In a review by the State of California, Amira was the only screener able to demonstrate a statistical lack of bias. In a review by Georgia College for the State of Georgia, Amira scored highest for equity.
Amira is independently audited by three separate firms: financially, for security, and for compliance with its contractual commitments. Amira carries substantial cyber-liability insurance and has contractually committed to more than 2,000 government agencies that it will not sell or release student data.
The current versions of the agreements that govern Amira's relationship with a district, including how student data is handled. These are the canonical copies referenced in customer contracts, not summaries of them.
The request goes through the district, because the district holds the education record and Amira acts on its instruction.
Our team can help your district evaluate Amira's privacy, security, data-management and contractual practices. If it is a question a district should be able to look up, the answer joins this page rather than staying in an inbox.