Public K-12 education is facing some real challenges in the United States. Teachers feel burnt out and are leaving the workforce in record numbers. The current state of education is equally alarming for students, with average test scores for reading and math declining across the board. These results come despite massive investments by the U.S. government in K-12 education.
Researchers and industry experts collectively agree that one-on-one tutoring positively impacts student outcomes. Study after study shows that students receiving “high dosage” tutoring display accelerated learning and achieve higher test scores. The challenge is that high-dosage tutoring is not scalable in the classroom and costs $4,000 per year on average, a price point that is largely unattainable for most American families.
SchoolAI has built the first scalable solution to provide every student with one-on-one, personalized education. Teachers can provide a personalized “space” where students can explore different subjects with a personal tutor. What was it like at the Battle of Gettysburg? Students can ask questions to an artificial intelligence version of a Union general who was on the battlefield. Learning algebraic functions for the first time? An AI math expert can guide students and answer questions. Students can learn at their own pace and in a personalized way.
SchoolAI also offers overworked teachers tools to make their lives easier, such as the ability to automate lesson plans, autogenerate a syllabus, or have quizzes recommended on particular subjects. SchoolAI’s vision is to create an AI-native operating system for K-12 education, empowering teachers and administrators and delivering better outcomes for students. You’d be hard-pressed to find a better founder to build this company. Caleb Hicks started his career as a teacher at Lehi Junior High. He deeply understands the challenges of having 30+ students in each of his classrooms and teaching 200+ simultaneously each semester. After teaching junior high for several years, Caleb was an instructor at Devmountain before joining Apple’s instructional design team. He then co-founded Lambda School, a leading online code school now known as the Bloom Institute of Technology.
Caleb’s experience as both a public school teacher and a tech company founder is unique. His deep empathy for students and teachers is yielding exciting early results. After launching less than a year ago, hundreds of teachers are signing up for SchoolAI every day, and hundreds of thousands of students are using the product daily.
With the release of ChatGPT in late 2022, the world has awakened to the possibilities of generative AI. One could argue that no industry stands to benefit more from these advances than education, and we are excited about SchoolAI’s potential to be the platform that leverages this technology to transform it.