Teachers are frequently asked to take on an abundance of tasks — from teaching new topics and problem-solving skills to grading assignments and communicating with students, parents and other teachers. Now a new startup wants to provide artificial intelligence to cut down on those late hours and weekend work.
As a former teacher and principal, Adeel Khan was more than aware of this juggling act. When generative artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT rolled out, he saw an opportunity to give teachers more of their time back.
Khan launched a generative AI startup for K-12 educators called MagicSchool in May. Now, three months later, the Denver-based startup raised a $2.4 million pre-seed round.
MagicSchool offers grade-school educators more than 50 generative AI tools to help them with lesson planning, diagnostic assessments, quiz generation, text translation, parent communication, text leveling and more. The free software works on any browser.
“The origin of MagicSchool was this idea that there should be an application layer for generative AI that meets teachers where they are, doesn’t require them to become a prompt engineer but gives them really, really high utility from this transformative technology,” said Khan, founder and CEO of MagicSchool.
The startup runs on a proprietary and highly contextualized layer of OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, and complies with all school and district data privacy requirements, Khan said.
MagicSchool recently launched internationally and now has the capability to translate its software to various languages, including Hebrew. It adds one to two new tools each week.
To develop MagicSchool and its countless tools, Khan worked with software engineering friends and a former educator. After about two months of research and development, MagicSchool launched.
Today, the platform is used by more than 100,000 teachers and more than 10,000 schools, including districts like Rocky Mountain Prep, KIPP Chicago Public Schools and Ednovate in California. Khan said 3,000 to 4,000 new users sign up for the platform each day.
Khan said he hopes MagicSchool provides teachers with tools to simplify their days and ultimately help reduce teacher burnout.
According to July 2022 research from analytics firm Gallup, K-12 employees have the highest burnout rate in the U.S. across all industries. Research shows that 44% of K-12 workers said they “always” or “very often” feel burned out at work, as compared to 35% of college and university employees and 31% of healthcare staffers.
“The educator burnout issue is at crisis level,” he said. “... Educators are burned out. ... They’re desperate for things that can make their lives easier so they can live more sustainable lives, they can go home to their kids and their families, they can stay in the profession and not leave.”
MagicSchool’s pre-seed round was led by Denver venture capital firm Range Ventures, which sees the need to help teachers stay in the industry.
“Adeel has an unparalleled track record of success as an education leader and there is a real crisis in this country with teacher recruitment and retention. He is not only going to build an amazing company, but he will improve the lives of teachers and most importantly students everywhere,” Chris Erickson, co-founder and managing partner at Range Ventures, said in an email.
The pre-seed round also saw participation from Rethink Capital, Charter School Growth Fund, GSV Ventures, author Ted Dintersmith and other VC firms and angel investors.
This fresh capital will help MagicSchool grow its six-person team. The startup plans to hire two more engineers and build out its customer support and training team. Some of the funding will also allow MagicSchool to travel to edtech conferences.
“Quite frankly, I want to keep it as lean as possible until we have to, but we do have some part-time consultants who are helping us,” Khan said.
That said, MagicSchool’s goal is to hit 1 million users by Jan. 1.
It plans to roll out new products in the coming weeks, including a science lab generator and question-generating tool that will scrape transcriptions from YouTube videos and create questions for teachers to ask their students related to the video.
MagicSchool will also launch a premium offering in September, but Khan said there will always be a free version of the software.
“When I was a teacher, the reason why I wanted to be a principal was to impact more kids and software is an incredible tool for leverage,” Khan said. “... The amount of kids that get impacted through the leverage of a software tool is just so exciting to me and really compelling.”
While MagicSchool’s generative AI tools will help teachers do more faster, Khan said it doesn’t completely take the burden off educators’ backs. He said generated content should be used as a first draft and that educators should always review and verify the information. To help, MagicSchool offers what it calls a responsible user interface that provides warnings to users reminding them not to take generated content verbatim.
