The kids in Ms. Cadwell’s seventh-grade remedial math class at Egan
Jr. High in Los Altos, California, are
doing things differently this year.
They solve problems at their own
pace, using a computer program that
gives them instant feedback, charts
their progress, and rewards them
when they get 10 correct answers in a
row. Instead of listening to the teacher
lecture about dividing fractions, they
learn from short videos that they can
pause and rewind. They progress very
quickly—more than doubling their
scores on an exit exam in just the first
sal khan /
Khan Academy
12 weeks of this pilot project. Students
earn badges for solving problems rap-
idly and accurately, and for working
hard to master a concept. It’s “like a
game,” says John Martinez, 13. “It’s
kind of an addiction—you want a ton
of badges.”
The man behind this remarkable
venture is an unabashedly geeky for-
mer hedge-fund analyst and star high-
school mathlete named Sal Khan. The
mission of his not-for-profit Khan
Academy is “to deliver a world-class
education to anyone any where.” And if
you ask supporters like Ann and John
Doerr, Bill Gates, and Google.org, he
has a good shot.
Khan, who lives in Silicon Valley,
used to tutor his younger cousins
in New Orleans over the phone. He
built the first version of his so-called
adaptive-learning system for them in
2005. “I viewed it as something that
would generate more exercises and
track how they did them and whether
they got them right. Once they got
10 in a row right, they could move on.”
As he later found out, this is called
“mastery-based learning,” a technique that’s supported by 80 years of
research but is unwieldy to implement
without special software like Khan
Academy’s.
Later, Khan replaced the live phone
sessions with videos he uploaded to
YouTube. “When I started, I really
viewed it as ‘I’m going to talk to my
cousin Nadia about math.’ I wasn’t
paralyzed by a fear of being judged by
the world.” The 5- to 10-minute videos
show colorful equations and doodles
on a black background while Khan’s
friendly voice explains, say, the Doppler effect or organic chemistry. He
has made more than 2,000 videos to
date, all free on khanacademy.org and
You Tube. They attract about 2 million
unique visitors a month.
Khan, who now has hired a presi-
dent and a team of software engi-
neers, makes videos every day. “Five a
day if I can. I think Khan Academy
will get watered down and lose its
focus if I’m not more focused on build-
ing content than debating policy.”
But with the success of the math
pilot at Egan and two other schools
in Los Altos, Khan is on a path to
become a central figure in national
education-policy debates. “I talk a lot
about flipping the classroom,” he says.
“As powerful as we think the software
and the videos are, what’s really pow-
erful is what it does to the rest of the
class time. Teachers are spending
more time on investigations and
project-based learning,” and working
with students one-on-one. “They’re
having their cake and eating it too!”
—Anya Kamenetz
Illustration by Josh CoChran
