NC lawmakers want to use AI to boost student performance. Will it help?

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Republican state lawmakers could award $5 million in no-bid contracts to use AI for the purpose of providing tutoring support to students.

The newly released state budget includes $2.5 million for middle schools and high schools to use Khan Academy’s Khanmigo program and $2.5 million to use MagicSchool’s MagicSchool program. Both programs are billed as ways to use artificial intelligence to help teachers with their lesson plans and students with learning comprehension.

An earlier proposal filed by Senate Majority Leader Michael Lee called for providing $10.1 million to just use Khanmigo. Lee, a New Hanover County Republican, did not return a request for comment from The News & Observer.

“This is allowing our LEAs (local education agencies) the ability to compete,” Lee said during the June 3 Senate Education Committee meeting. “It is something that gives them another tool in the toolbox to reach kids who may not have access across our state to what you may have in Durham, or I may have in New Hanover, or we may have in Wake.

“This allows these kids the ability to compete, and our schools the ability to compete, and I think that’s important.

The inclusion of both items in the state budget released Tuesday by Senate leader Phil Berger and House Speaker Destin Hall means it’s virtually a done deal.

“I’m struggling to find the evidence that shows that this is a better investment than, say, $10 million in instructional assistants,” Sen. Sophia Chitlik, a Durham Democrat, said at the June 3 Senate Education Committee meeting.

The focus has been on Khanmigo because MagicSchool didn’t officially enter the picture until the budget was released. Lee has been trying since 2025 to get the state to fund the use of Khanmigo.

More than 200 million registered users use the free online educational programs developed by Khan Academy, a California-based non-profit founded in 2008 by Sal Khan. Khanmigo was launched in 2023 as an AI chatbot that could help students using the platform.

“As a nonprofit, we really just care about moving academic outcomes,” Khan said in an interview with The N&O. “I tell our team every day, if someone else can move academic outcomes better than us, we shouldn’t exist, like we should go do something else.”

MagicSchool is a Colorado-based for-profit ed tech company. MagicSchool did not immediately return The N&O’s request for comment Tuesday.

Justin Parmenter, a Charlotte-Mecklenburg teacher has questioned on his blog the push to get another AI program into North Carolina’s classrooms.

“It feels a little bit rushed right now for them to be throwing this money out there at a time like this,” Parmenter said in an interview.

Parmenter and Democratic lawmakers have pointed to an April interview that Khan gave to nonprofit news organization Chalkbeat, in which he said the chatbot “was a non-event” for many students and “they just didn’t use it much.”

But Khan told the N&O that the redesign they’re rolling out this year will be a much improved version of Khanmigo and the Khan Academy platform. For instance, Khan said Khanmigo will act more now like a human tutor as it alerts teachers when a student is having problems and gives incentives for students when they do well.

“If we can get in the hands of the schools, the teachers, and the students, we can drive that practice, that engagement, and I think engagement is everything here,” Khan said. “If we can drive that engagement, then I’m hopeful we can see acceleration in learning outcomes.”

The state Department of Public Instruction said it didn’t request the AI support program. But the agency said it’s not opposed to it either.

Lee, the lawmaker, has said they’ll be able to judge the effectiveness by having the North Carolina Collaboratory’s Office of Learning Research study the program.

Khan has visited North Carolina and talked with state lawmakers. But Khan said he didn’t lobby for the inclusion of the state funding.

Unlike for-profit companies who “promise the sky,” Khan said Khan Academy has the studies to prove its programs work at driving student achievement.

“No one at Khan Academy gets any economic benefit from this,” Khan said. “We have zero lobbyists, and I genuinely think this is Senator Lee and others doing a deep survey of what’s available and what actually has evidence behind it,”

This story was originally published July 1, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline “NC lawmakers want to use AI to boost student performance. Will it help?.”