Michael HornThought leader creating a world where all individuals can build passions & fulfill their human potential. Author of the national bestseller Job Moves: 9 Steps for Making Progress in Your Career

AI in K–12: Feedback, Curiosity, and the New Frontier of Teaching

Name: AI in K–12: Feedback, Curiosity, and the New Frontier of Teaching
Uploaded: 2025-12-10T15:16:53+00:00
Duration: 1 min 48 s
Channel: Michael Horn
Description: In this excerpt, the speaker outlines the "5% problem," noting that while tools such as Khan Academy, i-Ready, and IXL have solid evidence of…

10 Dec 2025 · 2 min

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1:48

In this excerpt, the speaker outlines the "5% problem," noting that while tools such as Khan Academy, i-Ready, and IXL have solid evidence of effectiveness when used at a recommended dosage—often as little as 30 minutes per week—only about 5–6% of students actually meet that usage threshold. This low adoption is framed as an implementation or enactment issue, echoing broader educational research that many high‑impact classroom practices (e.g., active learning) are hard to scale. The speaker then asks whether AI can help teachers adopt these practices more easily, especially by reducing preparation time or providing real‑time classroom feedback. Current AI tools that listen to classrooms and offer feedback are described as rudimentary, but the speaker expresses excitement about deeper development in this area.

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But the 5% problem to turn to that, Michael, that I wrote about was simply the finding that there are many tools out there, Khan Academy, Iready ixl, several others that have actually great evidence that students learn when they use them, if they use them at the recommended dose. So it's a dosage question. And that dose is usually just as little as 30 minutes a week. And so they've shown that if for kids who use 30 minutes a week, they will learn, they will accelerate their learning. But then when you read the small print, it turns out that the percentage of kids who use these tools 30 minutes or more a week is about 5 or 6%. It's extremely low. And so the question is why? And the truth is we don't know why, but what it goes to. Implementation, right? Enactment and any good. So there's literature is full of practices that we know can be more effective in classrooms, active learning, long list of things that, when done well, are very effective, but it's extremely difficult to scale them. So the really interesting question, I think for AI is can it make it easier for teachers to implement, well, things that they, my experience would love to be doing, but the preparation would take too long. The core program doesn't really allow it. So I think that we haven't. Again, that's another area where we haven't seen any tools so far. There are some that will listen to your class and give you feedback on it as a teacher, but so far they are fairly rudimentary. I think I'm really excited about that area getting much deeper.