While some states are using a cautious approach to AI, North Carolina is poised to leap into the chatbot revolution. Juston Parmenter has the story.
The North Carolina General Assembly is moving a bill that would spend more than $10 million in recurring state money every year to put an AI chatbot in front of students in grades six through twelve. No competitive bidding. No independent review of the evidence. No teachers consulted during drafting. Just a contract written into statute for a single named vendor.
The company is Khan Academy. The tool is called Khanmigo. Senate Bill 1006 — written by Sens. Michael Lee, Kevin Corbin, and Brad Overcash, the same Republicans who chair the committees it must pass through — could put it in your child’s classroom before the school year starts in August.
Before that happens, it’s worth asking what we actually know about this tool. The answer is less reassuring than supporters of the bill have suggested.
At its core, Khanmigo is a chatbot. It runs on GPT-4, the same OpenAI technology that originally powered ChatGPT, though OpenAI has since moved on to newer models. It sits inside Khan Academy’s existing website and tutors students by asking guiding questions rather than providing direct answers. The bill calls it the AI Instructional Support Program, designed to help students with “lesson comprehension.” It also generates lesson plans and assessments for teachers.
What it actually does in classrooms is another matter.
The actual research on Khanmigo is thin, and what exists is not encouraging. The most directly relevant peer-reviewed study, published in 2025, found no statistically significant differences in learning outcomes between students using Khanmigo and students using Google or traditional paper-based instruction. The researchers concluded that while AI-powered tutoring systems can support learning, their immediate impact on outcomes may be no different from conventional methods. That’s the best independent evidence available.