New Hampshire Department of Education enables free access to Khanmigo AI pilot for all New Hampshire educators and students

CONCORD, NH — On Wednesday, the Governor and Executive Council approved a new contract between the New Hampshire Department of Education (NHED) and Khan Academy to offer a pilot artificial intelligence platform for educators and students in grades 5-12 statewide.

Khanmigo is Khan Academy’s AI offering, which serves as a teaching assistant for educators and a tutor for students. New Hampshire is the first state to initiate a statewide contract with the nonprofit Khan Academy for its Khanmigo pilot, serving as an early adopter of this new technology.

“Khanmigo is a productivity tool for both educators and students. This AI resource essentially provides teachers with an online teaching assistant, and it offers students a personalized, real-time AI learning coach.” said Frank Edelblut, education commissioner. “We have worked closely with Khan Academy, the New Hampshire Student Privacy Consortium and school leaders from some of our largest districts to make sure that this tool will be a benefit to both educators and students. This teacher and student interface is an ideal resource for classrooms throughout New Hampshire, working as a Socratic tutor that we think could drive learning gains and save time for educators.”

“New Hampshire is at the forefront of AI for education and opening up access to new technology,” said Sal Khan, founder and CEO of Khan Academy. “Students and teachers across the state will be able to learn how to use AI and put it to use for their benefit. They’ll explore its enormous potential in the classroom.”

While Khan Academy offers a “freemium” version of its basic Khanmigo for teachers, this pilot includes a unique and extensive District Partnership Program that provides free services for teachers and students, turning AI from a content generator only to a Socratic tool to enhance teacher-student interactions and the efficacy of student learning. Some of these additional features include a writing coach with immediate feedback, the ability for teachers to customize assignments for students or groupings of students based on their specific learning needs, on-demand student support and multi-lingual tutoring. The pilot also offers enhanced services for educators such as custom professional learning, goal setting, school-level reporting, seamless rostering, and access to Chat-GPT 4 and student mode. These upgrades allow educators to use Khanmigo to build additional resources and classroom experiences based on the content in Khan Academy, and to summarize student chats to find trends and develop customized learning activities based on student needs. 

Khan Academy has executed a Student Data Privacy Agreement demonstrating its continued commitment to protect student data and implement strong user safeguards within its platform. Furthermore, teacher and student content that is submitted into Khanmigo is not used to train the underlying AI large language model or incorporated into that LLM.

“I see a lot of potential with Khanmigo, so it made sense for us to jump on this opportunity,” said Superintendent David Backler of SAU 20 in Gorham. Recently, SAU 20 piloted the Khanmigo program with a language arts teacher and a math teacher. “What we like is that Khanmigo doesn’t do the work for you, but it gives you good feedback on the work that you are already doing. We have rolled this out in a way that teachers can feel supported. This isn’t a shortcut, but rather a tool to provide educators and students with more support,” explained Backler. 

Within Khanmigo’s student mode, students are encouraged to think critically and solve problems with encouragement and guided prompts – without providing them with direct answers. It is a customized resource that can be useful for math homework, essay writing, science and other learning domains. 

Within Khanmigo’s teacher mode, educators can simplify their workflow, identify student struggles, synthesize data and assist with everything from warm-up activities such as mental math challenges to incorporating extensive unit plans. It also detects chat interactions that may be inappropriate, harmful or unsafe. When the moderation system is triggered, Khanmigo automatically sends an email alert to the teacher.

The $2.3 million contract for Khanmigo is funded with federal covid-relief funds and will be available for all educators and students in grades 5-12 through July 31, 2025, and will include comprehensive professional development for educators. New Hampshire schools that wish to take advantage of Khanmigo should contact the districts team at Khan Academy at districts@khanacademy.org to create an agreement (at no cost) to initiate services and training.