Growth & Impact
71 million registered users By the end of 2018
All sorts of people from all walks of life support Khan Academy, and there are a few big things that unite us. We believe education is a human right. We believe everyone deserves to get the education they need to succeed. We believe anyone can learn anything. We are dedicated to leveling the playing field.
More people than ever before use Khan Academy to learn and reach their potential! Here are a few results your support has had in 2018.
71 million registered users By the end of 2018
We don’t just measure our success by number of registered users. We’ve learned that measuring Monthly Very Active Learners* (MVALs) gives us a better sense of our impact. The data show greater than expected improvements in academic performance associated with this level of usage.
MVALs are people who use Khan Academy 120 minutes a month or about one class period a week. Not every MVAL necessarily experiences significant academic gains, but this level of organic growth is an encouraging sign of what is possible.
Obrigado, gracias, and धन्यवाद! In other words, thank you! You helped make it possible for people to learn in more than 190 countries and nearly 40 languages, including recently added Czech and Tamil!
Through a combination of organic growth and partnerships with educators and governments, in just two years we’ve been able to make a significant impact with students and teachers in Brazil, India, and Spanish-speaking Latin America in Mexico and Peru. Your support funds local Khan Academy staff and content aligned with local standards.
Khan Academy’s mastery learning system and content platform include thousands of exercises, videos, and articles that cover a range of core academic K–12 subjects. In 2018, we released…
“With an incredibly thankful heart and tear-filled face, I just want to say thank you. It is not easy starting over in the middle of your life, and something like Khan Academy makes it completely possible for anyone anywhere to learn anything.”
Lack of access to quality education is a persistent barrier to progress in the United States. This lack of opportunity disproportionately affects low-income families and students of color. To make sure that all students have equal access, Khan Academy partners with teachers to bring Khan Academy to the place where most learning happens: the classroom! And it’s working!
It’s a common misconception that Khan Academy primarily serves children who already have the resources to ensure educational success. In reality, the students using Khan Academy closely mirror the student population of the United States.
But that isn’t nearly good enough.
We want to make sure we help everyone who needs it, especially those students who traditionally face systemic barriers to academic opportunities. That’s why we started working closely with teachers and school districts, particularly those who are reaching underserved students. 2018 was the second year Khan Academy partnered with educators in school districts across the country to improve equity in educational access.
The graph above shows the percentage distribution by school poverty level of Khan Academy's US public school-based MVALs compared to the total population of US public school students. School poverty level is defined as the percentage of students in a school who are eligible for the Free and Reduced Price Lunch (FRPL) program, a federal program to provide food for students from low-income families. School FRPL data reflects the 2016-17 school year (the latest available data from the National Center for Education Statistics) and is binned into 10-percent increments such that the lowest poverty schools are those with 0-10% of students eligible for FRPL and the highest poverty schools have 91-100% of students eligible for FRPL. The Khan Academy data is the subset of Khan’s US monthly very active learners (MVALs) during the 2017-18 school year for whom we are able to infer school information (~250K student MVALs per month). Note that Khan Academy does not track information about where users attend school; this can only be inferred when a user is affiliated with a Khan Academy teacher who has identified the school where they teach. Overall, the distribution of Khan Academy’s US public school-based MVALs closely mirrors the US public school population: for both groups, 11% attend the highest poverty schools (in which nearly all students are eligible for FRPL), and about 5% attend the lowest poverty schools (in which few if any students are eligible for FRPL), with close alignment over the rest of the range.
“Growth mindset + Khan Academy = amazing success on the California state math test for the past two years (20× the growth of their district peers)! My students are determined, self-confident, and joyful in ways they’ve never experienced before!”
Being in the classroom means we are doing even more to support teachers. Teaching a class of 30 to 50 students with a wide range of understanding is tough. That’s why we’ve built a dashboard and tools to help teachers supercharge their teaching and meet the needs of each individual student. And we didn’t stop there. We want to help more people become teachers.
In 2018 we were proud to announce that we have partnered with the makers of Praxis Core, a qualifying entrance exam required for many teaching positions, to provide free test prep for aspiring teachers.
“From its founding, Khan Academy was meant to be available to anyone who wanted to learn. And, we’ve always known that teachers are crucial for motivating and unlocking the potential of students. It’s why I am so excited to see teachers—more than 140,000 in 2018—incorporate Khan Academy into their teaching at an accelerated rate. When we partner with teachers and provide essential tools and insights that empower them to do their most effective work with students, we have a chance to measurably accelerate learning on a whole new scale.”
Two years ago we began a pilot program with the Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD) to explore how Khan Academy can work more deeply with teachers to unlock student success. LBUSD serves a diverse population with a wide range of individual learning needs. It’s a minority-majority school district with nearly 60% Hispanic, 12% African American, and 12% white students. Now 93% of sixth to twelfth graders, 35,000 students, are using Khan Academy to advance mastery learning. Students learn at their own pace, getting instruction and questions at just the right level for them.
“It’s a game changer for these young people”
Chris Steinhauser Superintendent of Long Beach Unified School District
Khan Academy and Long Beach Unified conducted a joint correlational study of more than 5,000 students in the 2017-2018 school year to investigate the efficacy of this large-scale implementation. We found that 30 min/week on Khan Academy is associated with an additional 22 points on the state assessment. Long Beach Unified reports that this difference is 2x the improvement seen in classrooms who did not use Khan Academy. These findings hold true regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, family income, or English language learner status.
After statistically controlling for students’ prior achievement and demographic characteristics
Students’ ability to achieve their goals shouldn’t depend on their families' ability to pay for test prep.
Khan Academy and the College Board teamed up in 2015 to offer 100% Free Official SAT Practice. With this year’s college admissions scandal dominating the news, it is particularly important to understand if Khan Academy’s SAT practice is helping equalize access to college. Last year we found that just six hours of practice on Khan Academy were associated with a 90 point score increase on the SAT, a 50% larger gain than students who did not practice on Khan Academy’s Official SAT Practice. Score gains were consistent across gender, family income, race, ethnicity, and parental education level. Significantly, we see students across race and parental education levels using Khan Academy practice at that beneficial frequency.
“My first score was a 750, and I was not happy about it. My coach wasn't happy about it. My parents weren’t happy about it. And I thought, ‘Okay, I’ve got to do something to change it.’ So every day before track practice, I would study on Khan Academy. The day I checked my score I was like, ‘Am I really on the right person’s page?’ I was so excited. I went around the house waking everybody up. 1150. That’s a big, big change. Now I get the opportunity to basically go to any college I want.”
No child should start kindergarten behind their peers, but it happens every new school year. We’re working to change that. In July 2018 your support launched Khan Academy Kids, a free mobile app primarily for children ages two to six with no ads or in-app purchases. Khan Academy Kids combines educational content and social-emotional learning to spark a lifelong love of learning and help kids develop the skills they need for school.
In the five months since Khan Academy Kids launched, we have seen astounding participation:
“My daughter loves the Khan Academy Kids app. Through the app, she has learned how to listen to instructions, follow directions, and solve problems. Her vocabulary has improved by leaps and bounds. As parents, nothing gives us more joy than seeing her happily learning, reading, exploring, singing, and dancing with Kodi and friends.”