Rhode Island leaders credit rapid Khan Academy rollout with early SAT gains and broad student engagement

Rhode Island education leaders and Khan Academy on the webinar described a rapid statewide rollout of Khan District intended to embed SAT and PSAT practice into everyday instruction and expand access to college‑readiness supports.

"Every single high school in Rhode Island is really using Khan District," said Commissioner Infante Green, who credited the partnership with helping reimagine high school instruction and cited school‑level improvements such as Central High School placing second nationally in a Khan Academy challenge. "Our SAT scores went up 23% in math and 19 in ELA," she said, reporting that district leaders had shared those school‑level figures.

State RIDE staff said the November 2024 partnership announcement produced rapid uptake. "In less than three months, the average student who was engaging in Khan had their SAT score go up by nine points," said a Rhode Island official, and the state reported that 90% of high‑school students were rostered statewide and 60% of those students were actively engaged within two months of launch.

Khan Academy founder Sal Khan framed the program as the product of long‑standing work with schools and third‑party efficacy studies. "If students are able to do 30 to 60 minutes a week of personalized practice over the course of a year...percent acceleration," he said, summarizing multiple studies that, he added, supported the case for district integration and training rather than ad‑hoc use.

District and school leaders described how they embedded practice into school schedules. Ken, principal at Lincoln High School, said his school used advisory and intervention blocks and curricular integration to make Fridays SAT prep days and combined classroom instruction with Khanmigo and targeted practice to raise scores. "We had the highest combined scores of English and math in over 10 years at Lincoln High School," he said.

Donna, principal at Middletown High School, emphasized transparency to secure buy‑in from teachers, students and parents and said her school logged more than 122,000 minutes on Khan Academy since Nov. 1 for PSAT preparation. Francesca, director of math for Providence Public Schools, described four district shifts—alignment to standards, consistent expectations (a minimum of 30 minutes of practice per week and two skills proficiency per week), systems for data review, and culture building through leaderboards and incentives—that she said moved practice from compliance to student ownership.

Officials attributed quick scale to hands‑on onboarding: the state and Khan teams completed more than 40 data‑sharing agreements, set up single sign‑on rostering, offered weekly support calls and developed onboarding toolkits. Steve, a Rhode Island education official, said the state approach "cut through a lot of the bureaucracy" and helped get districts running quickly.

On instructional tools, school leaders praised Khan's AI features. "Khanmigo is absolutely phenomenal," Ken said, calling it an AI with guardrails that uses a Socratic method to guide students without "spoonfeeding" answers. School leaders also reported using Khan's writing coach and interim assessment plans to support broader academic goals.

Speakers highlighted implementation challenges and remedies. Francesca and other leaders acknowledged persistent obstacles, including ensuring consistent implementation across schools, building data‑use capacity, and creating time within the school day; they said those gaps were addressed with non‑negotiables, professional learning, and regular data cycles.

Webinar participants repeatedly framed the work as one component of broader school improvement: Sal Khan emphasized that technology must pair with "dedicated folks" and systems to produce results, and Commissioner Infante Green said she expects the partnership to expand and be embedded into ongoing state work.

The state and Khan Academy encouraged districts considering similar efforts to focus on alignment, consistent expectations, data systems and communities of practice. Khan Academy staff closed with contact information for their district partnerships team and said additional services — including rostering support, mastery systems, AI supports and interim assessments — are part of the district offering.

The webinar closed with leaders pointing to next steps of continued rollout, data collection for 2026 results and ongoing professional learning support.