TEA deal worth up to $15M draws scrutiny
Few dyslexic students are benefiting from tool that costs education agency $410K per month
The Texas Education Agency agreed last summer to pay up to $15 million for two years of access to a digital platform for dyslexic students that will not be ready for widespread use until February or March, according to documents and emails obtained by the Houston Chronicle.
Documents show TEA officials used emergency procurement measures to tap Baltimore-based AmplioSpeech to provide access to its virtual learning platform to students with dyslexia and speechlanguage disorders, as well as trained speech pathologists.
At minimum, the agency agreed to pay $410,000 a month to the company. TEA officials say eight districts are using the software as part of a pilot program now, with 300 students using the service.
Records show the agency does not have an official contract with the company, and the only documents outlining what the company was hired to do are purchase orders, emergency procurement forms and a four-page table of pricing and services they would provide.
Emails and requisition forms show the agency plans to spend as much as $15 million for 23 months depending on how many students use the service, and state officials expect districts to pay up to an additional $15 million over the same period to AmplioSpeech.
According to a TEA statement, Matt Montaño, deputy commissioner of special populations and monitoring, originally reached out to AmplioSpeech last spring to help continue speech therapy services for students after schools closed to help slow the spread of the coronavirus. TEA paid the company $1 million.
Before that first contract was completed, Montaño and others decided to buy access to the company’s platform.
“Stakeholder groups have long expressed concern around the quality of services provided to students with dyslexia in Texas,” TEA officials wrote. “Long-term, this partnership with AmplioSpeech will aid school systems in providing high-quality dyslexia services to eligible students well into the future. This platform is just one way TEA is responding to those concerns at the student level.”
TEA officials on Thursday said the agreement will last 23 months,
but only the first 11 months are funded.
According to an AmplioSpeech pricing sheet, its online platform will enable students to videoconference with therapists, allow therapists to track student progress and give students access to games and additional work they can do on their own as well as digital access to dyslexia curricula currently used by Texas schools. TEA officials said they hoped the platform will be launched statewide within the next two months.
Eight districts currently are using the platform as part of a pilot, and some are paying additional fees for AmplioSpeech-employed speech language pathologists to work with their students, according to the TEA.
TEA officials wrote in a statement that CARES Act dollars were used to bring “as much ongoing benefit to the state from those federal monies as possible.”
However, some special education and dyslexia advocates say much of the work promised by the arrangement with AmplioSpeech can be done with existing resources.
“You could use Zoom to do this work. So, if you’re going to spend $15 million, spend it on the service, not on the platform,” said Robbi Cooper, state leader for policy and advocacy with Decoding Dyslexia. “To really help districts, the money should be spent offsetting the cost of the providers” and therapists working with kids.
Kristin McGuire, director of governmental relations for the Texas Council of Administrators of Special Education, said much still is unknown about the arrangement and how schools would interact or be expected to help shoulder the cost of the new platform. And because the platform will not be ready for a statewide launch until most of this school year is over, she questioned how much benefit it would have.
“I’m not sure who would have asked for this,” McGuire said. “I’m never not going to be thankful to participate in some type of disability intervention service, but I can’t say that this was kind of a statewide desire or desperate ask. I’m not sure exactly where the decision to do this came from.”
Records show TEA awarded a contract to AmplioSpeech last April, without soliciting cost projections or proposals from other companies. The agency paid the company $1 million up front on April 15 to provide access to its platform, and in some cases speech and language pathologists, to help dyslexic students across Texas receive therapies remotely. That contract was meant to provide at least 10,000 students with help, which agency officials said it accomplished.
COVID ‘opened the door’
AmplioSpeech CEO Yair Shapira said he started the company in Israel in 2014 after trying to help his son overcome a stutter. The platform went through years of research and development before it first was unveiled in some Israeli and U.S. schools in 2019. He said the company’s U.S. operations are headquartered in Maryland, but 36 employees live in Texas and many others are scattered across the country. It serves “tens of thousands” of students nationwide, Shapira said. Media reports show it has also been used in Michigan and Walton County, Fla.
TEA officials said Montaño first became familiar with AmplioSpeech at a conference and contacted the company when schools began to close last March. Records show AmplioSpeech employees submitted a proposal to connect dyslexic students with speech pathologists. The company proposed to provide training, a TEAbranded dashboard, online documentations of services, self-practice tools, technical support and language therapists to help districts that were short-staffed. In exchange, it wanted $1 million up front, an additional $20.15 per student served each week, plus $66.36 per student served by an AmplioSpeech therapist.
”COVID opened the door in many ways,” Shapira said. “To have evidence-based curricula, this new technology, personalized and standardized therapy intervention — we believe AmplioSpeech’s platform worked great during COVID times and will work for the horrible learning loss we’re starting to see in post-COVID times.”
Although AmplioSpeech’s original agreement was not set to expire until the end of September, emails show TEA officials were eager to keep using the company’s platform or something similar. By the summer, Montaño said TEA officials had reached out to seven potential vendors for a project that would give students access to a
new dyslexia platform. Three, including AmplioSpeech, submitted bids.
The work TEA sought was nearly identical to what it received from AmplioSpeech in the spring, except the work ultimately awarded to AmplioSpeech in the fall would include digitizing dyslexia curricula currently used in Texas schools so it could be accessed over the platform.
Under a payment schedule approved by TEA, the company is to receive $410,000 a month for 11 months to provide services to “020,000 students.”
That caught the attention of TEA accountants, who sought to clarify AmplioSpeech’s completed work with Montaño before paying the first invoice.
“While the contract started on October 1, I do not think they have provided a service to a single student,” Montaño replied.
TEA accountant David Alonzo seemed baffled and emailed Montaño a table detailing what TEA owed the company for serving as few as zero students.
“Just want to confirm with you, is the 410K charge valid for zero students?” Alonzo asked.
“Yes. This makes sense,” Montaño replied. “Please proceed with payment.”
Shapira and Montaño said the first few invoices paid by TEA helped cover the cost of digitizing the existing dyslexia curricula. TEA officials said they began the second contract under a “broad purchase agreement” to facilitate a quick launch of the service.
“It took a while to get the ball rolling,” Shapira said. “I hope it will be launched very soon, and eventually it needs to get into the hands of hundreds of thousands of
students.”
Not ready for rollout
It is not the first time a TEA arrangement with a vendor has drawn scrutiny.
In 2017, the agency issued a $4.4 million no-bid contract to a new technology firm to collect and analyze data regarding disabled students’ individual education programs. That contract was canceled seven months later amid concerns raised by parents and special education advocates.
State auditors later said TEA had paid the company, SpedX, $2.5 million but the firm had done only about $150,000 worth of work. The U.S. Department of Education has ordered TEA to repay the $2.5 million in federal dollars spent on the aborted project. The agency still is fighting that penalty.
AmplioSpeech’s pricing schedule shows districts would pay $10 for each student who uses the platform, plus an additional weekly per-student fee if districts use the company’s speech language pathologists to provide services. Montaño and TEA officials said they are working with the company to reduce or eliminate the fees paid by districts after some in the pilot program said the costs “would likely preclude some schools from being able to participate.”
Currently, 300 students in eight districts are using AmplioSpeech’s platform as part of the state’s pilot program.
Houston ISD officials issued a statement saying that the district received 25 student passes from TEA, but that 4,575 students were using AmplioSpeech this year. They did not respond to questions about how the service is working and how much the district is paying for the service.
Melissa De Leon, director of special education for the Orenda Public Charter School District in Georgetown, said 50 students there are using the service. She said the charter system had a vacant speech and language pathologist position they were unable to fill, and AmplioSpeech was able to fill that gap with its professionals. She said the services the company was providing were high quality, and the digital platform has been especially helpful with remote and in-person learners.
Misty Higgins, special education director at Port Neches-Grove ISD, said about 25 of its students who are homebound due to medical conditions connect with AmplioSpeech’s speech and language pathologists but that no students in their schools are using the platform.
“We are very grateful for TEA and for AmplioSpeech developing this,” Higgins said. “I feel like it’s been very beneficial, and our parents have really liked it.”
While the service may be helpful to some districts, special education directors in local districts are not as concerned with having a digital platform for dyslexic students as they are with how they will help students with disabilities catch up after missing out on services during the pandemic, McGuire said.
“Is this the most appropriate way to prioritize our relief funding, when we know and everyone has acknowledged there’s some sort of learning loss experience, regardless of disability?” McGuire said. “I would much prefer a district be able to look at its population of students, their individual needs, and say, ‘We’re going to use this relief funding to pay for this particular service, or to contract with this occupational therapist to make up for what this student didn’t get.’ ”
Cooper with Decoding Dyslexia agreed.
“I think it was hastily done with good intentions and bad results,” Cooper said. “CARES Act dollars, to me, would mean it’s used for a shorter period of time during the pandemic. And the fact they ran this by special education directors to see if they could absorb the additional $15 million — it’s like buying somebody a car, and you don’t know if they can afford to pay the insurance.”