This story aired in the March 09, 2026 episode of Crosscurrents.
There’s a new instructor measuring how well San Francisco’s first and second graders can read. Her name is Amira and she’s an AI bot.
Teachers today are grappling with if and how to use AI in the classroom. When educators in the city went on strike last month, one of their demands was AI safety guards. But AI is already playing an important role in the classroom.
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Story Transcript:
REPORTER: It’s a Friday at the Tenderloin Community Elementary School. And that means...
MAI-TIEN NGUYEN: TGIF. It's cha-cha slide Friday! There it is!
REPORTER: The Principal, Mai-Tien Nguyen, leads elementary schoolers in their Friday morning routine.
MAI-TIEN: Go ahead and cha-cha your way to class.
REPORTER: After the cha-cha, a small group of first graders follow the principal into the library.
MAI-TIEN: Thank you for sitting down and getting started right away. We’re showing our special guest that you can independently sign in without any help as first graders, that’s a big deal.
REPORTER: For this class, “silent reading time” sounds a little different than it has in the past.
The kids each pull out a laptop from a box, and sit down at a table. They put their headphones on. And then they might hear something like this:
AMIRA VIDEO: Hi, I'm Amira, your learning agent for reading growth.
REPORTER: Amira is an app that uses AI to teach kids how to read and measures how well they’re doing.
The Amira mascot is a cartoon with dark purple hair and glasses. She wears jeans and sneakers with a bag slung over her shoulder.
Amira displays sentences on the kids’ computer screens that they read out loud.
STUDENT: Bud loves it under the deck. He plays in the dirt and cool mud.
REPORTER: The app waits for them to work through harder sounds.
STUDENT: James and Sam go to the…st..st…stream.
REPORTER: And if they mispronounce a word or make a mistake, Amira helps them sound it out with a video of a mouth enunciating the word.
The students here are reading at different levels; some are given full sentences to read.
STUDENT: James and Sam walk to the park.
REPORTER: Other students work on sounding out individual words.
STUDENT: Hot. Before. Hug.
REPORTER: You might think it would be a little chaotic to have several young students, all wearing headphones, talking into their computers. But it’s surprisingly quiet. The kids speak softly and seem focused.
And the ones that I talk to like the program, like Camila Quispe.
REPORTER: Did you like using Amira?
CAMILA: Yeah.
REPORTER: What do you like about it?
CAMILA: That it lets me read and it helps me learn better.
REPORTER: The San Francisco Unified School District first started offering Amira a few years ago, but most teachers didn’t end up using it very much.
Then, this year, a new state rule went into effect: California’s first and second graders have to take a reading assessment. And the district had to pick a program to run the assessment. They chose Amira.
The district told me the program cost $368,000 — funding came in part from a Salesforce grant to boost AI use in education. The state also provided a couple hundred thousand dollars to train educators on how to use it.
So, starting this school year all the district’s first and second graders took an Amira screener to test their reading ability.
The kids here today have already been tested, so they’re just practicing their reading with Amira now.
And it seems like it’s working well.
Julia Gelormino, an instructional coach here at Tenderloin Community School, says for some students it is. In her classroom, upstairs from the library she opens her computer to show me the kinds of data reports that Amira can generate for teachers.
JULIA: I want to go to the usage report.
REPORTER: We look at one class. Each student’s name is listed in a row.
JULIA: And so you can see all 29 of his students have done the assessment within this window. And let me see here...
REPORTER: She clicks on a kid’s name.
JULIA: And I can see from module one what have they mastered.
REPORTER: She can also see the specific sounds that a kid is struggling with. One student keeps getting the sound “ed” wrong. She says, this level of detail helps the teacher know exactly where a student needs extra support.
But Julia says that there are hoops to jump through before Amira really works.
JULIA: When you're using Amira, you need to make sure that all of the computers are updated. You need to make sure that you have headsets that work and you need to have a microphone that works.
REPORTER: This can be more challenging than you’d think.
JULIA: Kids, especially at younger ages, like to bite on microphones.
REPORTER: And then you need to make sure you have laptops for every kid and a fast internet connection.
The classroom I’m visiting today has only a handful of kids, but sometimes Julia says, a classroom of 25 students might be using it at once.
JULIA: And so Amira is trying to listen to one particular kid, but it's picking up other noise or other sounds.
REPORTER: Basically a lot of things have to go right. And when they dont…
JULIA: Kids can get really upset, right? Like they might be in tears because something isn't working, and then there might be one teacher that's by themself and it’s overwhelming, right? And so you're trying to help as many kids, [while] kids are getting frustrated, a kid might be crying, and you're just trying to get it to work.
REPORTER: Julia says kids who are further along with their reading and ones with access to technology at home tend to like the program more.
She says those with speech impediments or kids who are still learning English can find it challenging.
The kids I’m with today are all fluent English speakers, but that’s only true for half of Tenderloin’s students.
In San Francisco, English language learners are faring far worse when it comes to reading. Just over a third of first graders who are learning English are reading at grade level. That’s according to district data from this fall.
The district has a goal to get 70% of third graders reading proficiently. Right now, it’s not even close: fewer than half of third graders are on track.
And some people are worried that Amira isn’t going to help. Here’s Commissioner Alida Fisher speaking at the school board meeting where the board chose to use Amira.
ALIDA FISHER: I have grave concerns about what using Amira would mean for our ability to meet Goal 1. I think it is overpromising and under-delivering.
REPORTER: Despite her concerns, this is the tool the board ultimately chose. Now, teachers are using it to test kids’ reading abilities. And some teachers are using it regularly in their classrooms for “silent reading time.”
REPORTER: Back at the library...
MAI-TIEN: All right, first graders, peace signs up. Eyes forward to walk to class.
REPORTER: When the period is over, it’s time for these students to head to their next class.
MAI-TIEN: Wave to our guests. Bye bye.
REPORTER: This group and their classmates have now been screened twice using Amira. It’s too soon to tell whether this AI program is helping students meet the district’s reading goals. So, we’re all waiting to see how the next chapter reads.
In San Francisco, I’m Julia Haney for Crosscurrents.
