MagicSchool has emerged as the breakout AI tool in education, with millions of teachers rapidly adopting it. But what’s behind that growth? How exactly does it use AI? And what does its adoption mean for teaching and learning? Its founder, Adeel Khan, joined us to go beyond the hype. Diane Tavenner and I pushed on some of the questions that matter most: quality, privacy, and whether tools like this actually improve outcomes for students.
Diane Tavenner
Hey, Michael.
Michael Horn
Hey, Diane. It is good to see you. As always, it’s been fun because we’ve had this arc of really digging deep on AI with school models. And then we’ve been moving into the edtech tools that are starting to define a lot of current models, the new models we might see and so forth. And we’ve got another big one. I dare I say for today, this is going to be a good conversation.
Diane Tavenner
I am very much looking forward to it and looking forward to digging in. But before we do that, we have a quick ask for all of our listeners. Will you all rate or review Class Disrupted wherever you’re listening to it. And of course, please subscribe. We’ve never asked anyone to do this in seven seasons. And you know, this is, it turns out this matters. So we’d really appreciate it if you would do that.
Michael Horn
Yes, we would appreciate it. And we know we get a lot of feedback from listeners. We certainly get a lot of emails and texts and things of that nature. So we know y’ all are listening, but we need to see it in the ratings, reviews and subscriptions as well. It helps other people find the information, too. As folks know, this is a passion project for us and we want it to actually be influencing the conversation more broadly. So, look, we know we got a lot of folks tuning in from our great partners with the 74, Substack, Apple, Spotify, YouTube, you name it, we know you’re out there.
But subscribe, rate us, leave us a comment, and we’ll just be appreciative for that.
Diane Tavenner
We will. And we will continue to be grateful for the direct feedback as well, because we use that. We take that in. And in fact, this conversation today is something folks have asked for. So we. I will not waste any more time.
Michael Horn
Yeah, no, it’s true. Well, I’m thrilled because we get to welcome Adeel Khan to the show, known obviously for MagicSchool. But before that, we’ll talk about MagicSchool in a moment. But Adeel worked as a teacher, assistant principal, founding principal for DSST, the Conservatory Green High School in Denver in 2017, and then left a few years. I think it was like three or four years in or something like that to coach school heads. And my sense of, Adeel can correct me if I’m wrong on this, but my sense is this wasn’t the calling a year later. I think it was.
ChatGPT burst on the scene into people’s consciousness in November of 2022. And Adeel says, there’s something here. This can revolutionize the teaching experience and you know, quickly sees like, hey, teachers aren’t going to figure out how to use this productively. Let’s help them do that. Builds MagicSchool and it takes off like a rock rocket. No exaggeration. I think over 7 million teachers now use it. That number’s probably out of date.
As I say. It partnered with more than 10,000 schools and districts, I believe over 160 countries. So we’ve got a lot to dig in here. The use cases are broad. But Adeel first, welcome. It is great to see you again.
Adeel Khan
Thanks Michael. It’s great to see you too. And Diane, pumped to be on, on the podcast today and thanks for the kind introduction. Mostly accurate.
Michael Horn
What did I miss? Yeah, what did I miss?
Adeel Khan
You got, you got it mostly there. I think certainly when I got to coach principals, I didn’t, it wasn’t my favorite thing in the world. Not because it wasn’t a great opportunity. I worked on a great team and principals need support. But rather, I think when I was founding my school and building it, I thought, you know, if you’d have asked me if I had the most important job in the world, I would have answered yes. And I just missed that feeling. I didn’t, didn’t have that kind of builder chasing, really ambitious to me feeling when I was in that new role. And it’s sometimes good to know that about yourself, right.
I think that like sometimes trying something and knowing that you know where you are because, you know, in some sense at the end of my principal career and seeing the graduates in the first class of seniors, as I kind of built the full school out, I was exhausted. Right. And sometimes you think about, you know, what’s the other side like, you know, and you know, being an advisor sounds less intense than being in a school building every day and you know, chase this big dream and, and then, you know, knowing what the other side was like, I was like, oh no, some people are wired for this. Right? Being in the builder seat and being I learned that about myself. And even when things get hard today and they do, we have a lot of challenges. I, I know that this is what I want to be doing and, and I would be, you know, I wouldn’t be as there’s no grasses greener thoughts anymore. Even when those seep in, I’m like, nope. I, I know this is the thing.
Even when it’s, I’m in my most trustful habit.
Michael Horn
So I’m really, I love it because you’re willing to make the trade offs for the thing you really want. And obviously we hope all our young people start to grow that same muscle right in their lives.
Diane Tavenner
That’s the work I’m doing right now. So it’s an inspiring story.
Michael Horn
Well, I was going to say. Right, so like we have two, you know, Diane Adeel, you know, founding school heads become founding ed tech company CEOs. I think the story of the founding story of MagicSchool is somewhat well known, but maybe what’s less known Adeel is like how you think about the problem that you’re actually solving both originally and today because you all have expanded your scope quite a bit. But let’s start at the outset itself because I think your framing tells us a lot about why you grew so quickly. So, you know, how do you describe what MagicSchool first solved for teachers and why that approach was so important at the time it came out?
