Providence Parents Question AI Reading Tutor’s Use of Children’s Voices
Parents told the Providence School Board they learned secondhand about the Amira AI reading program, could not opt out, and want answers on voice recordings made before August.
Providence students in kindergarten through grade 5 use Amira, an AI reading tutor that listens to them read. Parents said they could not opt out and asked the board to require notice and consent for classroom AI tools. Curriculum director Michaela Keegan said the district no longer keeps recordings and would follow up with the company.
Providence, R.I. — Parents told the Providence School Board at Wednesday night’s meeting that they learned secondhand that their young children were using Amira, an artificial intelligence reading program that listens to students read aloud, and that they were told they could not opt their children out.
They asked the board to require advance notice and consent whenever AI tools enter classrooms, and they pressed the district on what happened to student voice recordings made before it disabled storage in August. Dr. Michaela Keegan, the district’s executive director of curriculum and instruction, said later in the meeting that Amira is used in all schools in kindergarten through grade 5, that the district does not keep recordings, and that she would follow up with the company on several concerns.
This account is drawn from the Providence School Board’s published meeting recording. The board took no vote on the issue.
What Amira does
Amira is a digital reading tutor that uses speech recognition to listen to a child read, analyze the reading and give feedback. Keegan said the district recommends that students use it 30 minutes a week, a little less in kindergarten and first grade, which she described as about five minutes a day instead of eight.
Parents say they learned by word of mouth
One parent, who said she is a clinical psychologist and the mother of a second grader, said she discovered two months ago that her 7-year-old was using a program that “listens to her read, processes her voice, and provides AI-generated feedback.” She said she heard about it from another parent at a birthday party more than a year after her daughter started using it, and that parent had learned of it from a newspaper article.
She said she emailed her child’s school to opt out and was told that was not an option because the district considers Amira part of the core curriculum. She said she and other parents across several schools formed a Providence chapter of Schools Beyond Screens and sent questions to Keegan, who provided documents on the program’s purpose, requirements and privacy protections. The parent said those documents “did not answer many of our questions.”
She said the district has had contracts with Amira dating to 2024 and committed to a minimum of 30 minutes of use per week per child in exchange for free licenses. “So, what about those data?” she asked, and questioned whether consent was obtained over the past 24 months. She asked the board to set requirements for advance parental notification, reasonable consent practices and the ability to opt out, along with disclosure of a tool’s educational purpose, evidence of effectiveness, data collection and alternatives. “Parents should not be hearing about these decisions from word of mouth,” she said.
Questions about recordings made before August
Another parent, who said he has written white papers on AI since 2015, said the district recently told families it disabled storage of new student voice recordings in August. He said parents appreciated the change but asked what happened to recordings before then.
He said the district told families they can request deletion of earlier recordings, and asked how families could request deletion of information they did not know was being collected. He said audio can be processed without being stored, and that reading assessments can generate transcripts and performance data. He said parents have asked whether such data can be used to develop AI models and have not received answers. He asked the board to ensure families get an accounting of what student data was collected, what remains stored, what can be deleted and how it may be used.
Concern for children with speech differences
Gabe Long, a parent and PTA leader, described his second grader’s friend, whom he called by a made-up name. Long said the boy has a significant lisp and that his parents primarily speak Spanish, and that Long’s son told him the friend is “always yelling” at the program, repeating a word because it cannot understand him.
Long paraphrased the Los Alamos superintendent explaining why her schools no longer use a mirror, saying speech recognition technology remains imperfect with young voices still developing articulation and with the speech patterns of bilingual learners, and that children become anxious when the software fails to register their responses. He said Section 504 of the federal Rehabilitation Act protects people with significant speech issues and argued the district has a legal and moral obligation to stop using the software. He said he did not want to go to the ACLU, disability rights advocates or the press, but added, “So if you do not act immediately, I will.”
What Keegan said
The subject returned during Keegan’s presentation on reading and math results. Board Member Steven Williamson said the AI concerns were news to him and asked whether difficulties with Amira for students with speech impediments or multilingual learners might relate to gaps in test results for those groups.
Keegan said she would be cautious about drawing that connection. She said she noted the parent’s account of a student with a lisp and would contact the company about it, adding that the program is supposed to understand accents and the language students speak. She said she shares families’ concerns, that she has worked on the parent and AI issues for only a couple of weeks, and that the district has been working with the company’s trust center to communicate back to families how Providence uses the program, what safeguards exist and its purpose.
Keegan said Amira has an effect size of 0.4 and called it one of the only intervention programs shown to close achievement gaps. She said the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) first brought it to the district a couple of years ago through grant work in several districts. “We didn’t promise 30 minutes a week for free licenses,” she said, adding that 30 minutes is the recommended usage. She said the district started with kindergarten through grade 3 and expanded to grade 5.
“We don’t record students’ voices. We don’t keep the recordings. We’ve set the setting to zero,” Keegan said, adding that she has a couple of follow-ups to do with the company on that point. She offered to meet with Williamson or provide a fuller report on the district’s response.
Williamson suggested the program might help multilingual learners while frustrating them so they use it less, and suggested getting feedback from teachers who work with those students. Keegan said the process is ongoing and she welcomes what families say. She said the district meets every two weeks with Amira and i-Ready to review how many minutes students spend, and that school staff monitor usage reports.
Students raise their own AI concerns
High school students who spoke after the board voted to extend public comment raised separate concerns about AI. One student asked why schools use AI to make posters and school merchandise when students with artistic interests could create them, and said one teacher uses AI for all assignments while students still struggle.
Another student said an anatomy teacher uses Gemini Pro for assignments, graphs and diagrams, and questioned using AI that could incorrectly depict parts of the body. That student said AI should be a tool available to students as well, describing learning to use it as a tool in a junior research class. A youth organizer with ARISE said schools need mental health support and said funds are going to things like AI.
What comes next
Keegan said a family guide showing how students spend their school day, including time on technology, was being translated and would go out through ParentSquare and the district website. She said she would follow up with the company on the recording settings and the speech recognition concern. No date was set for a board discussion of parental consent rules for AI tools.
This story was sourced from the complete transcript of the meeting and carefully summarized with an LLM. While we make every effort to ensure accuracy, the possibility of transcription errors could lead to inaccuracies.How we report meeting stories →
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