How is my child's privacy and security protected in a Khan Academy Districts partnership?
Welcome, parents and guardians of Khan Academy Districts students! We’re excited to partner with your child's school to bring Khan Academy's free, world-class education to them through the power of Khan Academy Districts.
In this partnership, your child will use Khan Academy and may have access to tools like Khanmigo—our AI-powered learning guide—during their school day. We know privacy and safety are top concerns for families, so this article outlines key information about how Khan Academy protects your child’s data and supports safe learning online.
Introduction to Khan Academy and Khanmigo
Khan Academy is an online learning platform offering expert-created material that is uniquely appropriate for students at all levels. Students can learn and strengthen their math or other course skills by using Khan Academy's interactive practice and tutorials. Through a Khan Academy Districts partnership, schools gain access to additional reporting tools, teacher resources, and a dedicated success team to support implementation.
Khan Academy typically comes with Khanmigo - an AI-powered student tutor that provides 1:1 support for students. Khanmigo also helps teachers unleash their creativity and better meet the needs of individual students.
Our Commitment to Student Privacy
Khan Academy is a nonprofit organization, and our mission is to provide a safe and effective learning experience for all students. Here’s what that means for your child:
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- We never sell any of our users' personal information.
- We don’t allow third-party advertising on Khan Academy.
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Khan Academy Districts and Khanmigo are designed to comply with student data privacy laws.
- We take extra precautions for our younger learners. As described in our Children’s Privacy Notice, we automatically block features that would allow a child to post or disclose personal information.
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We aim to make privacy easy to understand through our public Privacy Policy page and our security practices.
How Khan Academy Works with Schools
When your child uses Khan Academy through their school, special protections and procedures apply:
- School Accounts: When in a Khan Academy Districts partnership, your child's Khan Academy account is considered a "school account” and is protected by laws like FERPA and similar state laws.
- Data Sharing with Schools: School and district administrators have access to your child's learning progress, usage information, and Khanmigo chat summaries to support teaching and learning. This helps teachers and school leaders understand how students are doing.
- Transparency for Parents: Parents can easily connect their own Khan Academy account to their child's. Then you have full visibility into how your child is spending their time on Khan Academy.
- Data Retention and Deletion: Use of student data is under school control, and is retained only as long as needed for educational purposes. If your child’s account is no longer needed by the school, the school can request deletion.
AI Safety with Khanmigo
Khanmigo, our AI-powered learning assistant, has additional safety and privacy protections as outlined below:
- Safe Data Use: Khan Academy does not allow large language models (LLMs) to train their models using student data. Names and personal information are not shared with LLM providers.
- Moderation Alerts: If a conversation in Khanmigo is flagged for inappropriate or concerning content, an alert is automatically sent to the student’s teacher or administrator in extreme cases.
- Transparency for Families: Parents also have full visibility into their child’s Khanmigo chat transcripts.
- Resource: How do I view my child's Khanmigo chat history?
Questions? Concerns?
We hope this article gives you some peace of mind as your child's school begins their Khan Academy Districts partnership!
If you have concerns about how Khan Academy is used at your child's school, please reach out to your child’s teacher or school administrator directly. You also can contact the Khan Academy team through privacy@khanacademy.org for general questions about Khan Academy's data and privacy policies!