Newark Public Schools × Khanmigo — From a One-School Pilot to 66 Schools on Vendor-Run Evidence

Newark Public Schools (New Jersey) began piloting Khan Academy's Khanmigo AI tutor and teacher assistant at First Avenue School in 2023, at no cost, in grades 5–8 across maths, reading, writing and science. Newark was one of 53 districts piloting the tool. Chalkbeat reported that districts pay from $35 per student per year, that the board approved a data-sharing agreement in March 2024 to study effectiveness, and that the district had not released usage or outcome data.
Khan Academy's own case study says the partnership has grown from 14 North Ward schools to 66 schools and about 29,000 of the district's 43,000 students. It describes a three-year longitudinal study of about 8,000 pupils in grades 3–8 in which 'Yearly Proficient Learners' (those who learned 60 additional skills) gained on average 6 NJSLA maths points versus 2 for the state average.
The evidence is weak for causal claims: the comparison is with the state average rather than matched pupils, high-usage pupils may be self-selected, no effect sizes or confidence intervals are reported, and the results combine Khan Academy practice with Khanmigo so the AI tutor's own effect cannot be isolated. Early problems were also reported: Khanmigo made errors on basic maths, sometimes gave too much help and was available during assessments; Khan Academy changed prompts and disabled it during tests. Independent experts quoted by Chalkbeat called for more research before scaling.
Lesson for replication: the rollout shows how quickly districts scale AI tutoring, and why an independent, matched evaluation and published data should be agreed before expansion.

Read the full analysis: https://www.khanacademy.org/schools/case-studies/newark-public-schools