Khan Academy
Project Title
For support of updating and improving AP and high school Civics and history content
Date
Sep. 12, 2024
Duration
36 months
Description
Civics is critical in high school as this age group needs foundational knowledge to prepare them to actively participate in our democracy. Given the dynamic nature of U.S. history and government, there is a pressing need to expand and update high school U.S. history and U.S. government and civics courses and AP U.S. History and AP U.S. Government & Politics courses to ensure they are engaging, relevant, and high quality. As states and the College Board update their standards, and our legal and political landscape evolves with new landmark Supreme Court cases and societal shifts, these courses risk becoming obsolete if we do not invest in updating and enriching the material. With Corporation support, Khan would update and improve this suite of courses, first assessing gaps and developing additional content to bring courses up to date, then continuing to build more robust content aligned with key state standards to increase adoption and marketing courses to increase usage and engagement.
Website
Project Title
For enhancing teacher tools and developing parent resources
Date
Dec. 05, 2019
Duration
24 months
Description
While advances in technology have enabled shifts to personalized, mastery-based learning in K-12 classrooms, broad adoption of these tools among the vast majority of teachers has been slow, and parents have often been left out of their implementation. As a result, it can be difficult for teachers to adequately differentiate instruction and for parents to best support their child’s progress. Khan Academy is an online platform that provides free, direct-to-student mastery-based learning through videos, practice exercises and progress dashboards. The site has over 80 million registered users and over 19 million learners that access the site every month. In recent years (and with Corporation support), they have piloted approaches that shift the platform from primarily one that students can opt to use outside of school to one that teachers and districts regularly use during class time to differentiate instruction. With this grant, Khan plans to further enhance their teacher-facing tools and to create parent-centric resources on the platform.
Website
Project Title
For assessment and evaluation of the national LearnStorm initiative
Date
Sep. 08, 2016
Duration
30 months
Description
While advances in technology have enabled shifts to personalized, mastery-based learning in K-12 classrooms, broad adoption of these tools among the vast majority of teachers has been slow. In addition, schools most in need of innovative solutions and personalized learning are less likely to have teachers with the resources, exposure, or skills needed to make this shift. Khan Academy’s LearnStorm Challenge aims to provide teachers and students with low-risk, instant-value opportunities to try mastery-based learning through a competition that provides free online access to Common Core-aligned math content and incentivizes student progress, mastery and perseverance, with a particular focus on reaching low-income students. This grant supports learning and evaluation activities designed to gauge LearnStorm’s effect on student and teacher enrollment, engagement, persistence and retention in this mastery-based learning platform.