Arizona state superintendent wants more schools using AI tutoring app Khanmigo

Arizona’s Superintendent of Public Instruction wants to see more schools using AI to help support teachers and students.

Tom Horne says tutoring is the most effective teaching method, but financially that’s not a possibility. Instead, he says, schools should be looking at AI, specifically a tool called Khanmigo.

“It doesn’t replace teachers. It helps them,” Horne said. “It’s the equivalent of giving them two assistants to do the front work while they concentrate on creative teaching.”

Horne says students aren’t learning enough, and AI is a good way to help them better understand the subjects they need to master. He says Khanmigo doesn’t give students the answers.

“It gives some questions that lead them to the answers. They call it the Socratic method. It gives one-on-one attention to each student that the teacher just doesn’t have the time to do,” Horne said.

Horne says AI is a way to bring the tools of tomorrow in the schools today.

“Students aren’t learning enough, and this is a very good way to get them to master the subjects that they need to master in a way that the teacher can’t do because it gives the individual tutoring that the teacher doesn’t have time to tutor each student and exactly what that student needs,” he said.

Horne says the additional cost comes out to roughly $15 per child, per year. That has already been allocated for 160,000 students using Title 1 funds, which schools can use at their discretion.