Arizona continues to invest in innovation, leading the nation in the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) tutoring and learning tools through Khanmigo by Khan Academy.
Last year, the Arizona Department of Education invested $1.5 million to make Khanmigo accessible to Arizona students; now, over 170,000 students are utilizing the platform. The Department says that the state has the highest Khanmigo usage in the United States, making Arizona a part of the growing national trend toward AI-assisted education.
“I think we are (setting an example) because we have more usage on a per capita basis than any other state in the country,” said Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne.
Khan Academy is a nonprofit organization providing free online educational resources, including practice exercises, instructional videos, and a personalized learning dashboard. Founded in 2008 by Salman “Sal” Khan, the learning platform covers subjects from kindergarten through early college, including but not limited to math, science, reading, and history.
Khanmigo is an AI tool from Khan Academy that works 24 hours a day, 365 days a year as a personalized tutor for students and an assistant for teachers. Rather than giving answers outright, the tool guides students to the answers they are struggling to find through a Socratic approach, like the way a human tutor would.
“If you say, ‘What’s the answer?’ or, ‘What do I do next?’ it’ll say something like, ‘Well, what do you think you should do next?’ or, ‘I’m not going to give you the answer, but, wouldn’t it be nice if you could simplify one side of this equation?’” said Sal Khan, Khan Academy founder and chief executive officer.
“So, it’s giving you a gentle nudge, hopefully in the right direction, similar to what a good tutor would do.”
First launched in March 2023 as a pilot program, the platform will be used by two million students and teachers across the U.S., India, Brazil and the Philippines this school year.
Students in 40 school districts, including Mesa Public Schools, gained access to Khanmigo through last year’s investment, and Horne said he and the Department are working to expand the program to more students in the future.
Through Khanmigo, students can review lessons, challenging material, missed material or other subjects that just interest them. Horne recounted a story about a student who used Khanmigo to have a discussion with a character in the novel she was reading, showing how AI can make learning engaging, personalized and interactive.
“We did a lot of research, and we concluded that Khanmigo was by far the best application of AI to the classroom,” Horne said. “It doesn’t substitute the teacher; it helps the teacher. There’s no substitute for personal instruction, teacher to student, but it gives the teacher the equivalent of two assistants to do the grunt work so teachers can focus on creative work.”
For teachers, Khanmigo can help with lesson planning, progress reports, creating tests and grading. It also helps teachers create more customized lesson plans for the needs of their classes, and provides tools for integration, tracking student progress and managing classroom tasks.
Horne said that the department has received positive feedback from schools that are using Khanmigo, and believes the tool could “radically improve” educational quality by ensuring students master material before moving to the next grade.
He gave the following hypothetical scenario to explain how Khanmigo can benefit student outcomes and educational quality.
A teacher administers a test; some students score 90% and some others score 70%.
Without Khanmigo, students who score 70% will move on to the next grade missing 30% of the knowledge they need for further education. But using Khanmigo, a teacher can look at students’ tests and say, “Here’s what you didn’t get (that I taught). Go on Khanmigo and get tutoring.”
“Now we have the possibility that all the kids will have 90% going on to the next grade. I think this could be a really radical improvement on the quality of education in our schools,” Horne concluded.
At $15 per student per year, Horne said the program offers an affordable, scalable alternative to live tutoring.
“Research shows tutoring to be the best means of education, but I can’t afford 1,200,000 tutors for 1,200,000 kids,” Horne said. “With Khanmigo, you’re talking about $15 a year per student. It’s very affordable.”
The proof is in the pudding. Letter grades for Mesa Public Schools’ Kino Junior High School, Lowell Elementary School, and Smith Junior High School all improved from D’s to C’s since gaining access to Khanmigo in 2023 and 2024, according to data from the Arizona Department of Education.
Both Horne and Khan emphasize that Khanmigo is designed to promote integrity, not shortcuts.
“There’s no integrity issue here because it’s not enabling cheating,” Horne said. “There are some programs that enable cheating; Khanmigo does not enable cheating.”
“I think a lot of educators, right when they saw ChatGPT at the end of 2022, said, ‘Hey, this thing’s bad, this is going to be a cheating tool, we’ve got to shut this down.’” Khan said. “But then it took them probably a few weeks or a few months to say, ‘Well, maybe that’s not the right solution. This is going to be a part of kids’ lives. Maybe there are even ways to use it to help learn other skills.’
“And so, when we came on the scene with something that is actually pedagogically focused, that tries to minimize all of the bad use cases, it was very welcomed.
“I think the idea that districts feel they need to do something with AI … for us to be there, an organization they trust … and then for us to show that we have efficacy studies on our platform, so it isn’t just smoke and mirrors AI, it is efficacy. We’re serious about it, we’re trying to do everything in an ethical way.”
Arizona’s success with Khanmigo could position the state as a national model for responsible and ethical AI integration in education. Khan believes AI will challenge the existing system, especially in higher education, but he remains optimistic about the opportunities to broaden the practice and assessment capabilities of education systems.
“It will hopefully allow more teachers to make really interactive, rich classrooms,” Khan said. “Classrooms where kids feel catered to and not lost. In a class of 30, it’s very hard for all (30) of those kids to feel stimulated at the same time. If any teacher pulls that off, that’s almost a miracle. But I think we can actually get closer to that over the next five or so years.”
With more than 170,000 Arizona students already using Khanmigo, the state’s early investment may serve as a blueprint for others exploring classroom AI.