New Reading Technologies Help Students Succeed

Advancing PreK–12 literacy skills at scale demands innovative approaches based on the science of reading. Across the country, every day of the school week, time- and resource-strapped educators are working to meet individual student needs while ensuring progress toward proficiency for all. Digital reading assistants save teachers time, while enabling them to focus on teacher-led instruction, helping ensure every child receives personalized instruction on their journey toward becoming confident readers.

Accelerate Student Growth

Research has consistently demonstrated that personalized support accelerates student learning. The rapid results achieved by adaptive reading practice and intervention are a testament to the efficacy of AI-driven literacy solutions. These results aren’t theoretical; they’re tangible. Students realize significant improvements in reading proficiency thanks to these innovative technologies, which address an urgent need for effective literacy strategies that support teaching and learning and deliver student success. AI-powered reading assistants drive meaningful progress in literacy outcomes and may start reshaping how educators approach literacy instruction. These online tutors can take us toward a more inclusive, equitable, and successful educational future—a future of literacy for all.

Designed specifically to engage and support all striving readers, EPS Reading Assistant gives educators advanced AI-powered speech recognition technologies that listen to students read, provide real-time personalized interventions, and streamline oral fluency assessment. EPS Reading Assistant, when coupled with other EPS solutions like Reading Accelerator and SPIRE (used in 20% of districts nationwide), accelerates student growth toward grade-level literacy performance.

“EPS Reading Assistant enables 1:1 reading practice, addressing the logistical challenge of high student-to-teacher ratios, and equips educators with actionable student performance data. This innovation allows teachers to spend less time assessing and more time coaching individual students.”

— Steven Guttentag, CEO of EPS Learning

Maximize Every Minute of Reading Instruction

Simple to integrate seamlessly with classroom routines, EPS Reading Assistant utilizes adaptive reading practice modules. As students read aloud, the assistant is assessing student pronunciations, providing suggestions, and instantly capturing where additional support is recommended. Teacher dashboards display student progress and highlight the places where educator support will matter most. 

By utilizing technology to decrease the requirement for rigorous in-person training, EPS Reading Assistant helps educators deliver highly effective literacy intervention programs while increasing sustainability. The advantages for educators include:

• Unlimited practice: Students work independently, benefiting from real-time feedback and ongoing micro-interventions to further reading gains.
• Comprehensive reading assessments: The reading assessment platform covers universal screening, dyslexia identification, benchmarking, progress monitoring, and placement.
• Robust reporting: A suite of reports and dashboards delivered in a simple unified interface pinpoints specific reading skill strengths and deficits and tracks progress over time.
• More time to teach: Digital reading assistants enable educators to spend more focused time with individual students and small groups by providing personalized reading practice.
• Bilingual support: EPS Reading Assistant is available in English and Spanish to support diverse language needs.

“EPS Reading Assistant addresses two major obstacles we observe from educators: time-consuming literacy assessments for each student and limited time for one one reading practice and intervention,” said Janine Walker-Caffrey, Chief Academic Officer at EPS Learning. “We want educators to view the solution as a way to create an environment for productive practice that ultimately supports literacy growth. It allows them to reclaim precious instructional time by eliminating the need for one-to-one assessments, providing detailed diagnostic information that’s critical for foundational literacy instruction. While educators are working with small groups in targeted instruction, other students can engage in deliberate practice and continue their progress with EPS Reading Assistant's AI tutor. This maximizes every minute of reading instruction for every student. With its ease of implementation and adoption, EPS Reading Assistant is a transformative tool in today's literacy classroom."

EPS Reading Assistant combines the science of reading with the world’s most innovative technology, working together to deliver rapid results. Addressing the logistical challenge of high student-to-teacher ratios, the program improves sustainability by utilizing technology to decrease the requirement for rigorous in-person training. The assistant reduces educator wait time for results with its reading assessment platform, which covers universal screening, dyslexia identification, benchmarking, progress monitoring and placement, and more.

Screening for Dyslexia

By rapidly identifying indicators of dyslexia, the digital assistant helps teachers and schools more quickly ensure these students are receiving the optimal interventions for their learning and thinking differences. While a student reads aloud to the digital reading assistant, the system assesses the child’s reading skills and levels and serves them the appropriate reading practice and instructional supports. It also identifies non-readers, spots students exhibiting reading differences such as dyslexia, and provides appropriate pathways and guidance for educators.

AI-Powered Literacy Instruction

We’re constantly exploring new ways to expand the effectiveness of SPIRE reading intervention and the tools it offers to help students build literacy skills and accelerate learning gains. Our work with artificial intelligence (AI), tools for child speech recognition, and adaptive learning technologies provides these capabilities:

• Give educators more time to teach. Providing one-to-one reading practice and real-time automated feedback, a digital reading assistant can allow teachers to spend more focused time with individual students and small groups. Used in the classroom or remotely, this tool can also automate time-consuming progress tracking, freeing up even more of a teacher’s time while providing granular insights into students’ reading development.
• Accelerate learning gains. Digital reading assistants can accelerate the acquisition of reading skills and boost gains in proficiency, all while capturing the data to measure and quantify these gains. In a recent seven-month study, students who practiced reading aloud with a digital reading assistant significantly outgained their statistically matched sustained silent reading (SSR) classmates. Word identification, word comprehension, passage comprehension, fluency, phonemic awareness, rapid letter naming, and spelling were all areas where the digital reading assistant group excelled.
• Identify reading differences, including dyslexia. Intelligent digital reading screeners can be highly efficient with identifying pre-readers and students with signs of dyslexia. When these systems are combined with in-person teacher-led instruction, they’re extremely effective in helping pre-readers and students with dyslexia become successful readers.

We’re working to use artificial intelligence and adaptive reading technologies to augment teacher-led reading instruction and add new capabilities to quality reading programs. Digital reading assistants capture detailed student reading data and generate dashboards that inform instruction, saving educators more time for teaching. The AI-driven assessment and oral reading practice tool surpasses human tutor impact and emphasizes effect size as a measure of program strength. Look at these results!

Academic Research Supporting EPS Reading Assistant:

• Carnegie Mellon University Study: Grade 3 students using Reading Assistant showed greater gains in word comprehension (effect size: 0.56).
• Johns Hopkins University Evidence for ESSA Review: EPS Reading Assistant received a strong rating with an effect size of 0.64.
• University of British Columbia Study: English Language Learners improved reading mastery faster with Reading Assistant (effect size: 0.41 to 0.68). Specific measures of reading mastery improved by ELLs: fluency (1.29), sight recognition (0.58), comprehension (0.22).
• Additional Carnegie Mellon University Study: Students using Reading Assistant outperformed peers in various reading measures (effect size: 0.70).

Connect Teaching and Tech

Discussions around these new reading technologies extend beyond their immediate impact on literacy skills. These programs signify movement toward more inclusive, equitable educational practices, where every student can always access the tools and support they need to succeed. This shift goes beyond meeting academic benchmarks, fostering a culture of lifelong learning and empowerment. Connecting technology and pedagogy, reading assistants offer a pathway to enhanced literacy outcomes, equitable education, and accelerated learning. These innovative tools can pave the way for a brighter, more inclusive educational future.

Learn more about EPS Reading Assistant!

News: EPS Reading Assistant just won the Learning Counsel’s App of the Week!