(Des Moines, Iowa; Iowa Capital Dispatch & Radio Iowa) – The Iowa Department of Education announced Wednesday that some elementary schools will use an AI reading assistant to help with literacy tutoring programs. According to the Iowa Capital Dispatch, the department made a $3 million investment into Amira (EPS Learning) 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.

McKenzie Snow, the education department director said in a statement, “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. 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.”

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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 staff with the Iowa Reading Research Center, have said that this teaching strategy will help improve the state’s child literacy rates, pointing to reading scores increasing in states like Mississippi following the implementation of “science of reading” methods.

In May, Reynolds signed a measure into law 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 American Rescue Plan Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, 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, awarded to 41 elementary schools in 29 districts 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.

(Des Moines, Iowa) – Four years after he was forced from his job amid a wide-ranging scandal at the state-run Glenwood Resource Center, the facility’s former medical director is facing allegations of incompetence from the state’s own regulators.

According to the Iowa Capital Dispatch, the Iowa Board of Medicine has charged Dr. Mohammad E. Rehman with professional incompetency – an offense that is defined by the board as including malpractice, negligence, a lack of knowledge or ability to discharge one’s professional duties, or a failure to exercise a degree of care ordinarily exercised by physicians. The board has not publicly disclosed the basis for the charge or publicly stated where or when the offending conduct took place.

The charge against Rehman was filed in June but was only recently made public. A board hearing on the matter has been scheduled for Sept. 18, 2025. Court records indicate that as medical director at Glenwood, a state-run residential treatment center for severely disabled individuals, Rehman was the focus of a unanimous vote of “no confidence” from the medical staff in November 2018. Rehman continued to work at the facility, but resigned in April 2020, with state officials saying the resignation had been submitted in lieu of his termination.

(Photo via Google Earth; seal courtesy the State of Iowa)

His departure followed staff complaints of poor medical care, reports that the death rate at Glenwood had doubled, and that a federal investigation had begun into sexual arousal studies the home was planning to conduct on residents. That same year, Rehman and Glenwood’s former superintendent were among the defendants named in a civil lawsuit filed by six former Glenwood employees, including two physicians and a nurse practitioner. The lawsuit alleged Rehman had criticized doctors for providing residents with “too much” diagnostic care and treatment, and for sending too many patients to area hospitals for treatment rather than providing treatment using Glenwood staff.

The plaintiffs also alleged Rehman hired a physician at the facility to provide neurological care to Glenwood residents, although the doctor did not have any board certifications or experience as a neurologist. In addition, they claimed Rehman directed others to falsify or erase entries in medical records to hide damaging information that Rehman did not want to appear in the regularly audited patient records.

Much of the lawsuit centered on claims of wrongful termination in violation of public policy and on alleged violations of the state’s whistleblower law. A Polk County judge dismissed the case earlier this year after ruling the plaintiffs had failed to show a clearly defined and well-recognized public policy that protected their activities at Glenwood, and that they had failed to show they acted as whistleblowers by reporting their concerns to law enforcement or other public officials. The plaintiffs have appealed that ruling.