The Iowa Department of Education announced Wednesday that some elementary schools will use an AI reading assistant to help with literacy tutoring programs.

The department made a $3 million investment into for the use of a program called EPS Reading Assistant, an online literacy tutor that uses artificial intelligence technology. Iowa public and non-public elementary schools will be able to use the service at no cost through the summer of 2025, according to the department news release.

“Reading unlocks a lifetime of potential, and the Department’s new investment in statewide personalized reading tutoring further advances our shared commitment to strengthening early literacy instruction,” McKenzie Snow, the education department director said in a statement. “This work builds upon our comprehensive advancements in early literacy, spanning world-class state content standards, statewide educator professional learning, evidence-based summer reading programs, and Personalized Reading Plans for students in need of support.”

The program uses voice recognition technology to follow along as a child reads out loud, providing corrective feedback and assessments when the student struggles through a digital avatar named Amira. According to the service’s website, the program is designed around the “Science of Reading” approach to literary education — a method that emphasizes the teaching of phonics and word comprehension when students are learning to read.

Gov. Kim Reynolds and state education experts, including have said that this teaching strategy will help improve the state’s child literacy rates, pointing to reading scores increasing in following the implementation of “science of reading” methods.

In May, Reynolds that set new early literacy standards for teachers, as well as adding requirements for how schools and families address when a student does not meet reading proficiency standards. These requirements include creating a personalized assistance plan for the child until they are able to reach grade-level reading proficiency and notifying parents and guardians of students in kindergarten through sixth grade that they can request their child repeats a grade if they are not meeting the literacy benchmarks.

Reynolds said the law was a “to make literacy a priority in every Iowa classroom and for every Iowa student.”

The AI-backed tutor program is being funded through the state education department’s portion from the federal , part of a COVID-era measure providing states with additional funding for pandemic recovery efforts. The federal fund allocated more than $774 million to Iowa in 2021.

In addition to the new AI-backed programming available, the fund money is also going toward Summer Reading Grants, for efforts to address summer learning loss and close achievement gaps. The elementary schools that won grants have all “affirmed their commitment to including the personalized reading tutor as part of their evidence-based programming,” according to the news release.

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Imagination Library of Montana celebrated the statewide expansion earlier this summer of the program providing free books to children.

An initiative of First Lady Susan Gianforte, Imagination Library of Montana is a partner of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. The Governor’s Office announced in June the growth of the nonprofit that boosts early childhood literacy.

“It is exciting to see how Imagination Library continues to spread across Montana and inspire a love of reading in our state’s youngest readers,” First Lady Gianforte said in a statement. “Our local partners have done a fantastic job helping families get enrolled and spreading the word that this program is available to all Montana children up to age 5.

“I look forward to seeing its continued growth and impact.”

The program provides a free book each month to any child up to 5 who

“Prior to launching the initiative, the program was only available in some Montana counties and approximately 9,500 Montana children were enrolled,” said a news release from the Governor’s Office. “Today, Imagination Library of Montana has 63 local program partners in all 56 counties serving nearly 24,000 of the state’s eligible children.”

It said Montana is the 16th state to take the program statewide. The news release said the program is part of the Dollywood Foundation, a nonprofit that has gifted more than 200 million free books in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and Ireland.

The Imagine Library mails more than 2 million “high-quality, age-appropriate books” each month, said the news release.

“Dolly envisioned creating a lifelong love of reading and inspiring children to Dream More, Learn More, Care More and Be More. The program has been widely researched, and results demonstrate its positive impact on early childhood development and literacy skills,” said the news release. “Boosting literacy to empower more Montana children and promoting and expanding access to STEM education, particularly for girls and students in our rural communities, are our First Lady’s chief initiatives.”

United Way of Missoula County announced this month it had delivered its 300,000th book through the Imagination Library program after opening in 2015. It operates in Missoula and Mineral counties and helped launch the program in Ravalli County.

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Jessica Davis knows all about encouraging her kids to read. The Garfield Park mom has three kids, all at “totally different” reading levels. Her daughter will pick up three books at a time, while one of her sons wants nothing to do with it. Her other son has autism, Davis said, and he needs extra stimulation to drive his interests.

For Davis, that means filling her home with all kinds of books — chapter stories and picture books, fantasy novels, sports stories and biographies of successful Black athletes such as Jackie Robinson and Wilma Rudolph — to capture each of their interests.

That can be a big cost for a family of three growing readers, so Davis said, she turned to The Mind Trust.

The local nonprofit has given small literacy grants,ranging from $500 to $5,000, to dozens of Center Township families over the last four years. Equipped now with more than 200 books in her home library, Davis said the grant helped advance her family’s reading goals far more quickly than she could have achieved on her own.

“I don’t think, where I am financially, there would have been a point in time where I had that chunk of money to do something like this,” Davis said. “It would have been little by little.”

At a time when Indiana educators and lawmakers are looking to improve reading scores across the state, Davis’ approach shows an example of one model that works. The mom says all of her kids’ test scores have improved.

The Mind Trust began its  four years ago after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, acknowledging that learning gaps were likely to worsen as students spent time out of school.

State officials say literacy rates have been on the decline for a decade, long before the pandemic. But reading scores have remained stagnant in the years since COVID-19 started, with about one in five third graders last spring not passing the state’s standardized reading exam. That motivated state officials to secure grants for large-scale tutoring projects and  to help Indiana meet a goal of 95% of students reading at grade level by 2027.

The Mind Trust oversees one of those large grant projects. The Indiana Department of Education chose the nonprofit to administer its statewide  program, which has awarded more than 20,000 tutoring grants in partnership with 380 schools. But, the Go Farther Literacy Fund, which may only reach a handful of students with each award, is just as important, a spokeswoman for the nonprofit told Mirror Indy.

“Not only is it building literacy skills,” said Kateri Whitley, the Mind Trust’s senior communications director, “It’s building community.”

Davis and her family have received two rounds of grants. She used the first, a $2,500 grant awarded last year, to select books for her kids and build out a space where they would enjoy reading. That included a beanbag chair, rug, bookshelves and a crash pad for sensory learners.

“I’m just trying to cultivate a healthy relationship with being calm and reading at the same time,” she said.

This year, Davis applied for a second round, totaling $2,000, to help buy a laptop to use digital programs such as Audible and Amazon Books during the summer after her kids turn in their school-issued Chromebooks. She also picked out a children’s dictionary and thesaurus set, cursive handwriting books and new titles her kids picked for themselves.

Davis said her family hopes to apply again for a third round to add seats in their home reading room.

“We have found with all three of our kids, a lot of their friends don’t have the best home life, don’t have the opportunity to even go to the library,” Davis said. “The next steps would just be adding to our collection … so that other children can come and have a spot to sit and relax and read.”

Building cultural connections

The Mind Trust has given four dozen grants to families. The nonprofit also awarded funds to a few small projects each year.

, an Indianapolis-based language school, received a $3,000 grant this year to support the launch of Libros Para Indy, a program that puts books written by Latino authors directly in the hands of Spanish-speaking families.

María Rosana Mestre, the program’s founder, sources hard-to-find books by authors from countries such as Argentina, Chile, Spain and Venezuela. Families are encouraged to take home their favorite titles, read them and bring them back to exchange with others.

Some of the books are bilingual. Others are written in Portuguese. Mestre says incorporating these books into bilingual students’ reading can help build a connection to material they may not otherwise find in their English-based lessons at school. That connection, Mestre said, can create excitement for reading that later translates to other studies.

“It’s reading for pleasure, not reading because it’s homework,” Mestre said. “The truth is that many times they are not native English readers, and many of their families are behind because they don’t read at home.”

Judith Gomez heard about Libros Para Indy through her children’s school, Invent Learning Hub. She showed up there last week with her daughters to pick up new books to take home.

“I feel like an important person because of the people who come here and share information,” Gomez, speaking in Spanish, told Mirror Indy through a translator. “They take account of us as Latinos.”

Seeing results

Davis used her grant money to educate her kids about their cultural heritage. She shopped at , owned by local author Leah Johnson, and picked titles that teach Black history or have appeared on banned books lists. She said she wants her children to feel represented through the books they read.

“With their reading comprehension, it has made a difference for them to have stories that they’re really interested in,” Davis said. “Because now they can give me the actual synopsis about what was just read.”

She says those gains have matched the goals her kids’ teachers set for them at school. Davis said she regularly communicates with the educators at Emma Donnan Elementary and Middle School.

She shares credit with her kids’ teachers, but feels strongly the extra time reading out of school has made a difference. Today, her kids read for at least 20 to 30 minutes a day.

“They enjoy it a lot more,” Davis said. “That’s really the goal. I want them to be enthusiastic about all of it.”

The Mind Trust plans to offer the grant again next school year. In the meantime, the nonprofit has shared resources  about how families can start their own home libraries.

This story was originally published on Mirror Indy.

According to the , 29 states and the District of Columbia used weak tests, giving false assurance to nearly 100,000 educators nationwide.

The study’s findings were released as roughly don’t meet reading expectations by fourth grade — with an even bleaker reality for historically marginalized students, the study said.

“Every child deserves great reading instruction, but far too many children aren’t receiving it,” NCTQ president Heather Peske said in a statement. “This lack of preparation has a profound impact on students’ literacy skills and future prospects.”

NCTQ reported 56% of Black students, 50% of Latino students, 52% of students in poverty, 70% of students with disabilities and 67% of English learners don’t meet reading standards, according to the .

The think tank determined whether states used strong, acceptable or weak elementary reading licensing tests based on how much each addresses the core components of scientifically based reading instruction.

The core components include phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.

Of the 25 different tests that states used, the think tank identified 15 as weak — with only four considered acceptable and six considered strong.

In total, 18 states used strong tests — including California, Texas, Connecticut, Colorado, Ohio and Virginia — and 28 states used weak tests — including Florida, Nevada, New York, New Jersey, Illinois and Hawaii.

Iowa in particular stood out for not requiring a test at all — suggesting teachers in the state would not be well-versed in how to teach reading, the study found.

Strong tests use at least 75% of the core components, in addition to addressing struggling readers and English learners.

Acceptable tests use at least half and weak tests use less than half of the core components identified.

Weak tests include the “Praxis Elementary Education: Multiple Subjects (5001)” test used in 16 states and the “Praxis Elementary Education: Content Knowledge for Teaching (7811)” test used in seven states.

“Teachers who aren’t prepared in the most effective instructional practices for teaching reading unknowingly enter classrooms ill-prepared to help students become successful readers,” Peske said. “States can help ensure teachers are prepared to teach reading effectively by requiring stronger licensure tests.”