Amplio Launches Esperanza, a First of its Kind Digital Spanish-Language Dyslexia Curriculum

Staff Reports

AUSTIN –  AmplioSpeech(“Amplio”), a developer of a digital platform that connects students, educators and therapists with advanced technologies to help students with special needs, announced today the launch of a digital Spanish-language dyslexia curriculum, Esperanza, developed by Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan.

The Texas Education Agency (TEA) is offering Amplio’s digital intervention platform with the Esperanza curriculum to all 1,029 school districts at no cost. Earlier this year, Amplio and TEA launched an English-language dyslexia digital intervention platform utilizing the Multisensory Teaching Approach (MTA), developed by Margaret Taylor Smith, which is also available to all Texas school districts at no cost. Esperanza is the first Spanish-language dyslexia curriculum of its kind.

“Using advanced technologies, Amplio’s platform facilitates individualized, outcomes-focused interventions and intensive digital guided practice, correlating to student progress,” said Dr. Yair Shapira, founder and CEO of Amplio. “We’re excited to offer the first-ever digital Spanish-language dyslexia curriculum with Esperanza, which will help bilingual students gain native language literacy.”

“Amplio was designed for use in the classroom, during a lesson, as well as when remote instruction is needed,” Dr. Shapira added. “At a time when educators and parents are concerned with the tremendous toll of learning loss and the ‘COVID slide,’ we must think out-of-the-box to help our students and educators quickly recover this lost time.”

By addressing specific sounds, words and general reading concepts, interventionists can use Esperanza to provide differentiated and individualized therapy for Spanish-speaking or bilingual students with dyslexia. Utilizing advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and natural language processing, the platform functions as an extension of the interventionist by assessing student responses and providing visual and audio cues to support the lesson. Amplio recently piloted Esperanza in Ysleta and Crowley ISDs, directly impacting over 40 students with dyslexia.

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan, Director of the Valley Speech Language and Learning Center and Amplio partner, commented, “It has always been my hope that all children have access to high-quality reading interventions. The demand for digital and online resources for students has dramatically increased. The Amplio platform allows the Esperanza Spanish literacy program to reach more students with the added benefit of highly-trained professionals who now have access to real-time data that informs and enhances literacy instruction. Through the Amplio platform, we can further accelerate our mission of providing every bilingual child the opportunity to read and learn.”

In May 2020, TEA approached Amplio to help address learning challenges faced by students in speech and language therapy programs due to the outbreak of COVID-19 and the switch to remote at-home learning. Speech-Language Pathologists have access to Amplio’s platform and interact remotely with students to provide speech therapy required by each student’s individualized education program (IEP).

More than 10,000 students have received services through Amplio’s platform, and the partnership has effectively allowed Speech-Language Pathologists and Interventionists to support large caseloads virtually, while also providing valuable documenting, monitoring and oversight services.

About Amplio

Amplio’s digital platform connects students, educators, therapists and administrators with advanced technologies to help students with special needs maximize their potential and improve outcomes. Whether on-site or online, the platform equips students with individualized, high-fidelity interventions and enables educators to devote more time to direct instruction. Administrators gain a 360-degree view into student progress and programs, resources, compliance and funding.

Our solutions are developed in conjunction with parents and a world-class advisory council, academics, and school administrators with expertise in special populations. Tens of thousands of students have received services and interventions using the Amplio platform since the solution was launched in 2019.

 About the Texas Education Agency

The Texas Education Agency is the state agency that oversees primary and secondary public education. It is headed by Commissioner of Education Mike Morath. TEA improves outcomes for Texas’s 5.5 million public school students by providing leadership, guidance, and support across the state’s 1,200 school systems.