Teachers -- what do you think of the changes in Khan Academy Reimagined?

Mr Steve, Vandenberg.Mr, Varghese Alexander, @Mr. Filipe, MBMD, 

Would any of you like to add feedback about how KA Reimagined makes things better or worse for classroom teaching?

It's killing me and my team of seven teachers---I'm ready to pay for a subscription so that we can at least see class percentages easily for a course and a unit AND quickly see which questions students get wrong most on an assignment without having to use a 65 inch screen and scrolling through all the questions randomly offered.

Dear Janice Holz,

Yes, I'd love to provide feedback. As a Khan Ambassador (nearly since the program's inception), I truly care about this website and I share what I share for the best of the Khan community, its developers, its teachers, and most importantly its student users.

Due to the inability to see "birds-eye" status of students' progress, it is now ten times harder to monitor student progress. I've been using Khan Academy for 10 years now with *massive* learning growth for my students (typically 300% to 400% of expected CA state test cohort growth per year every year for the past decade. In fact, I was the very first teacher that Sal Khan himself interviewed on his live daily web show (back during the pandemic)), so I know pretty well how to make the KA resources & website work toward huge effectiveness for students.

However, with the new KA Reimagined format (with no opportunity to opt out & revert to the "old view"), it is **extremely** difficult and highly **time consuming** to see who needs help on which units and which skills. I teach 6th grade (and this year also 5th grade), and for 10 years I've assigned literally all **MASTERY LEARNING** coursework for grades Early Math (K-2) through Grade 6, which left me essentially 7 courses of progress to monitor, which took about 1-2 hours every weekend to update myself on every kids' progress in detail.

However, now that I can only look in at *Unit* Progress, and that only through a .CSV file download **PER UNIT**, I've gone from about 1-2 hours of progress monitoring work per weekend to 4-5 hours of work per weekend, AND I finish with truly FAR LESS clarity of which kids need help on what.

I'm now having to go back in and check in on *every* *single* *unit* from Early Math thru 6th (and yes, half my students start that low), which means about 8 to10 times as much work every week. This is *extremely* time consuming and *extremely* inefficient. I don't mind the all-new look & features of KA Reimagined (although the KhanMigo character is quite a bit juvenile for Middle Schoolers & above). They aren't so bad. But the inefficiencies caused by removing course progress overviews for teachers (and for students, BTW) is **extremely** devastating to this website's effectiveness.

Varghese Alexander,

So if you give KA money, you can get back some of the functions you used to get for free?  

Is KA Reimagined partially a money grab?

(BTW, I found it interesting that KA pays about 12 employees over a quarter million dollars annually each for 40 hrs/week of work.  Then they nickel & dime teachers & school districts?!)

Pleaseeee bring back the old interface! My team is genuinely struggling. The students don’t like it. It’s all counterintuitive, just made things much harder for everyone. Sometimes simple is gold, this is one of the times. Thank you for starting this thread! Hoping it gets more traction!

Additional comments, as an addendum to my initial post above:

All of my Students AND Parents AND every Teacher I work with who heavily uses Khan Academy (about 15 teachers at my school sight alone) all have a VERY difficult time finding their way to work on what they'd like to on the new Khan Reimagined experience. It's not due to a lack of familiarity with the new format. It's clearly due to the absolute difficulty and non-intuitive user interface. They all (students, parents, and teachers) find the new interface HIGHLY frustrating and non-transparent. The old system is *vastly* superior and is already missed as students, parents & teachers feel like they are treading in mud with no clarity as to where they are and where they are going. There is *SO* much power & motivation with the old "birds-eye" view of course & unit progress, both for teachers (class-wide) AND students (individual immediate course-level progress transparency). Student empowerment, self-agency, motivation and self-selected pathways are all nearly extinguished as a result. Students can *NOT* see the big picture, so they lose motivation to keep going, as there is literally no end in sight. This is nearly an educational death sentence for kids who already begin the year VERY far behind (on average 3+ years behind at the start of the year, but nearly everyone catches up under the old system by the end of the year!).

Under the old system, I could keep my students going because they could see the end (of the entire course) in sight, even though getting there will be MONTHS away (in May/June). But now that they literally see *NO* end (of each course I assign), a HUGE piece of motivation is gone forever, making working till May/June a nearly impossible goal for an average student.

Still more comments:

I'm trying to see how my students are doing on their assignments, and I'm utterly overwhelmed trying to manage the 70+ assignments that I'm now forced to seperately monitor & update on a regular basis, instead of the **ONLY** 7 scores I used to have to monitor (Early Math thru 6th Grade). Think of that: Instead of 7, now it's **70**+!!! I don't have time for 10x's the work & effort to stay on top of all my students' progress & point of need for help! I literally have NO CLUE how my class is doing now and neither do I have the Time to wade through the weeds of column after column after column of 70+ units'-worth of .CSV files to know what in the world is going on with my class.

I am SO distraught & devastated by these changes, and I speak as a teacher who for TEN YEARS has effectively motivated & coached my class, all with (the old format of) Khan Academy, toward 300% to 400%+ Growth on their CA State Tests! That was LIFE CHANGING GROWTH results for my 6th graders, for a DECADE!!! I literally don't know how I can ever continue that growth any longer under the new & vastly inferior KA Reimagined Format.

Also: I cannot search assignments by course. I have to have the unit names memorized. And with 70+ Units to keep track of, this is nigh impossible.

I've been using Khan in my classes for the last 8 years, and this change has now taken away the students' ability to see their scores on the assignments they turn in. This makes it almost not usable for me as a homework/extra help tool. I hope they add in a column for scores under the completed assignments tab so I can continue to use Khan otherwise, I will have to find another alternative :(

@JaniceHolz thank you for starting this thread, I hope it does get more attention.

Please bring back the old layout.

I have been using khan academy as an external source fore my class for over 4 years now and I have never had any issues with it. But this new interface really gets in the way of my teaching.

First of all - the energy points/badges.
My class used to love the energy points system and badges. They would constantly talk about who had the most and would always try competing for the best badges. I didn’t mind as it kept them motivated into completing the tasks I set them. Now seeing them go away just leaves them with the gem system, that, in my opinion, honestly just looks like it was made for 2nd grade. Isn’t that what khan academy kids is made for? Why put all of that into this app? Yes, I understand that customising your own avatar/khanmingo with accessories can be fun for many children, but there are people using this website as a student that aren’t ‘kids’. And erasing their hard-earned badges and energy points just feels like a waste.

2 - Not being able to see my class’ scores
How am I supposed to see how my class is doing on their tasks? How do I know that they aren’t struggling with anything? One of the main reasons I used to love khan academy was because of the accessibility over my children’s scores. Now, it is very difficult to do this and I do hope khan academy fixes this problem. My school does not use any subscriptions on khan academy and is not willing to unless it is necessary and the only possible thing we can do.

Lastly - removing the questions on the videos
The questions feature under the videos was quite nice, until they removed it. It was very helpful when my students had questions on a question or video they had. If khan academy wants users to ask questions on khanmingo, I would just like to mention that not all users have khanmingo enabled. In my opinion, I think khan academy is just taking this as an opportunity for people to get a district subscription. Like I said, my school doesn’t have a subscription and a lot of other schools don’t. Please take this into mind, khan academy.

Khan academy is a great source of education and I love how it’s free but it’s just this new interface that bugs me. It’s also interesting how they said that they listened to teachers, yet I still haven’t seen a single post about anyone who likes the new update.

- 19.08.26

Been using KA for several years, but I don’t think I will be any more. The new interface is a nightmare. Too bad … it was a good run, but I suppose all good things must come to an end. I’ll check back every once in a while to see if the old format makes a comeback.

I agree with everything being said here. I have used it in my classroom as well as for individual students. I work at an educational non profit that supports first generation students on their way to college. This new layout makes it much harder for me track what they are doing and to assign what they need. As a teacher/coach this new format is terrible. 

I would love an option for teachers to go back to the old format.

Also, I did request khan academy to add an option where you could choose which layout you preferred so it would help people that were really struggling with this new update. I haven’t heard back from them and It has been 3 weeks now and nothing has changed.

I made the same request, Ash. Their support informed me there was no way to access the old layout and switch to it. 

PLEASE, please bring back the the old interface!!! The update is so hard to navigate for me and my students. Students are not able to track to see their scores and what they need to go back and "try again" on.  I've been using KA in my classroom for 10 years now and it has helped me target specific skills for my students. I am no longer able to track this and help them easily. 

I agree. I have been using Khan since 2020. I used to reuse my assignments by going to Manage assignments, click on the assignment, do it myself to make sure it’s still what I want, then assign it to the class. Now, my old assignments are listed from oldest to newest with no way to resort them from newest to oldest. I have hundreds of assignments, and don’t have time to either delete all the old ones page by page starting from 2020 to get to the most recent, or keeping hitting “next” to finally reach the most recent assignments from 2025-2026.

I can’t easily find the scores for assignments. I have to set a custom date. Students are having trouble finding their assignments.

I can’t easily click on an assignment to do it myself. If you click on”practice myself”, once you actually locate that button buried somewhere really deep, you have to be enrolled in your own class as a student in order to do that.

I can’t conduct an exercise search? I have to use the menu which is horrible.

I am beyond frustrated. I am likely going to stop using khan and revisit the free delta math option.

I am SO DISAPPOINTED. This update is the worst I have ever seen. Do better Khan.

Because of the changes, I am currently searching for something else to use with my students instead of Khan. Does anyone have any recommendations?

I've been using KA for several years. The new interface makes it impossible for me to use it as before. I will have to discontinue use. KA has lost another loyal customer.

Another *major* miss with the Reimagined Khan is that students no longer are able to take Unit Tests to full mastery to earn a 100% score on a unit, but instead the new scoring system considers them 100% finished with a unit as long as all skills are at minimum "Proficient" rather than requiring them to be at 100% "Mastered". This, then, sadly leaves out the absolutely crucial step of what's called "interleaved" practice, in which students are expected to figure out which skill(s) to use when rather than using the same skill blindly over & over because that's just simply the skill they are practicing. There's a big difference between a homework assignment covering (mostly) the same skill over & over, and a unit test which randomly assesses a wide variety of (often related, but different) skills and the student needs to ascertain which skill(s) to use when.

Email I sent to Khan Academy that did not receive a response:

I realize someone at Khan Academy thought this would make things more engaging, but it does not.  The site is now a nightmare for kids and teachers to navigate.  Not a single one of my students said they found the "Gems" or "Missions" to be motivating.  I find it hard to believe that this was tested with a sufficiently large sample of teachers and students.  

I have been using KA extensively since COVID.  Students ability to navigate the site and my ability to provide them direction has completely been lost.  I can not for the life of me understand how this helps students navigate a subject.  The old way I could assign a student on a remedial grade in the Getting Ready For courses and they would be off to the races making up the material.  They knew what they had to work on, they used the test as a diagnostic and backfilled the trouble spots in order to get mastery.  Easy to follow graphics and a table of the material.  It was AWESOME!  They had a percentage that would tell them about the progress.  It was genius for diversifying the class so I could have every kid working on the level they needed and could easily monitor the material and progress.  Now all of that is gone.  Students are complaining as well.  Time to find another App.  This one does not provide the ability to be a self learner anymore.  I am not sure how to use it either.  It has increased my work load not decreased it.

Absolutely hate it. I do not understand this change at all. I can not assign individual topics to practice as it makes me select entire math units. Will have to find a new product. Probably switching to IXL because this will be pointless all year if I can't assign the topics we are doing that week only instead of whole chunks. I have no idea why anyone thought this was a smart change. So frustrated as was just coming to set up my classes and have already wasted an hour trying to figure out how to do it only to realize I can not. I have used Khan for well over a decade and it has been fantastic. No more.

Hate It!  I have been a Khan user and pusher of it for 15 years.  My students (who used to prefer Khan) are begging to go back to iXL.  I prefer the content on Khan, but if something doesn't improve with the ability for students and teachers to easily see scores, I'm going to have to find something else.  I feel the same as every above comment.  I'm sad to have to say goodbye, but it's useless if I cannot access any data.  Even when I found scores listed, it only shows a partial assignment name unless you click on it.  Then it opens the assignment.  If you go back, it starts you at the first page of assignments.  So, for example, the assignments that start with "Finding constants of proportionality from..." has 4 or 5 different things.  They are spread on page 2 & 3 of my assignment scores.  By the time I open to find out the name and go back to the begining, I'm not even sure what I clicked on.  My students have found 2 different pages that they can compare to try to figure out whic assignments they should try again.  You can guess how many are willing to do that.  I really hope they straighten this out soon (like yesterday).

I have trained *Dozens* of teachers at my school site and other sites to use Khan Academy to great effectiveness & amazing results in their students' state test growth over the past ten years.

However, with the new Khan Academy "Reimagined" format, it has become nearly impossible for teachers to truly monitor how their class is doing overall without spending (wasting) *MASSIVELY* more time looking through the leaves & granules of data rather than the overall class view on both the Unit and Course Mastery level. As a result, I know of DROVES of teachers who are now LEAVING Khan Academy as an instructional tool, because the new Khan Academy Reimagined format is just incredibly UN-useful and UN-helpful to teachers (and even students).

Plus, the new format on the Student View is extremely juvenile, geared more for 4th through (at the very most) 6th grade, with the Khanmigo Avatar being an embarrassing (too juvenile) feature for students aged 7th through 12th grade.

Overall, then, the new Reimagined format is a HUGE Lose-Lose for both Teachers AND for Students. PLEASE reinstate Teachers' ability to monitor class-wide progress without having to look at granular data (which is still great, but only when wanted), and PLEASE make the website look appropriate for students age 13-18 (and even older)! Otherwise, Khan Academy will be losing THOUSANDS of Teachers & Students *very* quickly due to this poorly executed "refreshing" of what was otherwise one of the greatest educational websites of all time (well, at least it used to be).

We hope Khan can do better, ASAP.

I have used KA for years now.  The new interface is not that friendly to use for teachers and students.  I would love for the students to be able to see their percents so that they can retake the exercises as needed.  I don't like that even if the student scores a 0, it shows they have completed an exercise.  

Another few things I’ve discovered while trying to keep the hope alive that we can continue using it - sadly it’s dying. Students get incredibly frustrated that they can’t see what grade they earned and this leads some to just call it done. Parents of our younger students see an assignment is “completed” but little do they know it’s a 0 or 25% 😔

As a teacher, trying to assign assignments is incredibly frustrating. It was so straightforward before, easy to find things. This is no longer the case and then finding an assignment after you’ve assigned it can sometimes be a task. I believe there are still glitches on the new interface. For example, students complain about opening up and assignment and it starting on question 2 and not allowing them to go back.

Please Khan, we love your website but we are drowning right now.

Sal.....in the beginning of what would become khanacademy, you spent hours training your family through YouTube making concepts SIMPLER. Explaining them in a way they could be understood.

What an Orwellian switch that now the company that has your name has taken the website and made it overly COMPLEX for seemingly no good reason. 

I have used Khan academy since it was a space screen with activities to click. I have watch it grow to the program it is today and some of the unbelievable advancements that have been added to the platform. With that said, the current changes make it almost unusable in a classroom setting. Loss of the LearnStorm tracker is loss of student motivation and teacher autonomy with the program. Prior to this we could set goals that we need, use it for review of prior grade level content, or just a 1 day activity of "if we get this many rings today we can..." 

If was great for review and a tool that supported teachers that teach 100-150 students a day. The new updates have changed everything and pushed Khan into the realm of a district level intervention program just like everything else. At this point there is not point in trying to use it because it works just like all the paid district programs (ixl, iready, etc..) 

Without the ability for teachers to use it the way they need, you have boxed in our ability to be creative and motivate. If these changes stay without bringing back the LearnStorm tracker, I have no choice but to move on to a different platform that is easy for my students to navigate and understand their progress. 

Want to come back and say I made the switch to free Delta Math account (grade 5 kids) and the students are really liking it and it is easy to customize and assign them the skills I see they need to review from past grades or the practice skills for the lessons we are currently learning. It also has multiplication fact practice which has been amazing to give them all quick practice weekly. It is easy to see who is done and not and also I can decide how many problems they do on each skill and decide if they lose a point for errors. Also has test review where you assign a skill and they can practice as much as they feel is needed. Interface is super clean and easy. A quick google search helped me set up classroom fast and decide how to use. Honestly really loving it and so are the kids. Won't be back to Khan!

After reading through all these comments, I can see that I am not alone in how far underwater I am trying to interpret my students' data. At some point, when do we pull the plug because there aren't enough minutes in the day? Come on KA do better! Show up and listen to what we have to say. Make changes because it is already the middle of September, and I can't do this for much longer.