Magic School vs. Khanmigo for Teachers: Which AI-Powered Productivity App is Right for Your School?

By Chad Lesausky

chad@sunriseclassroom.ai

X.com: @clesausky

LinkedIn

Looking for a guest speaker to do an AI talk at your school’s next faculty meeting? I’m your guy!

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Let’s be real, teaching today is all about balancing too many responsibilities while navigating the constant pressure of standardized testing. You don’t need another app with a cute name and colorful logo on your aging district-issued laptop, you need a miracle. Enter two of the buzziest AI dashboards for teachers: Magic School and Khanmigo for Teachers.

Both promise to save you from paperwork purgatory. Both swear they’ll give you your Sunday evenings back. But who actually delivers? Let’s break it down.

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The Elevator Pitch

• Magic School: A smorgasbord of teacher tools. Lesson plan generators, quiz builders, parent email templates, you name it. It’s like Costco for teaching resources: overwhelming at first, but once you find the free samples, you’re hooked.
  
  
• Khanmigo for Teachers: Built by Khan Academy, it’s free and laser-focused on time savings. Think lesson hooks, exit tickets, rubrics, student groupings, even newsletters. Less “tool buffet” and more “curated meal.” You don’t get everything, but what you get is pretty solid and you didn’t pay a dime.
  
  

The Core Difference

• Magic School is about breadth. It's like a jack of all trades.
  
  
• Khanmigo for Teachers is about depth. It zeroes in on cutting prep time and aligning with standards, with the bonus credibility of Khan Academy’s library behind it. 

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So Magic School is like that friend with 27 side hustles. Khanmigo is the reliable buddy who shows up on time with pizza and a well organized tool box.

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Features Teachers Actually Care About

• Magic School: Custom lesson plans, Common Core-aligned rubrics, quizzes, parent communications, accommodations for diverse learners, even IEP help. Basically: “Oh crap, I forgot tomorrow’s lesson” is no longer a crisis.
  
  
• Khanmigo for Teachers: Generates lesson openers (“hooks”), exit tickets, class summaries, differentiated tasks, rubrics, and multilingual newsletters. It’s tuned for cutting specific prep bottlenecks. Bonus: it’s free.
  
  

Ease of Use

• Magic School: Login, scroll through a massive menu of tools, pick your poison. Fast, but the sheer number of options can feel like walking into Home Depot without a map.
  
  
• Khanmigo for Teachers: Streamlined, minimal learning curve. In their words: “start using within minutes.” Think Ace Hardware: everything to get the job done without the guy clogging up the aisle with a cart full of drywall. 

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Pricing

• Magic School: Subscription-based. Districts usually foot the bill, but there’s a price tag.
  
  
• Khanmigo for Teachers: Free for teachers. That’s right, free! Which is about as rare in education as a functioning copy machine five minutes before the morning bell.
  
  

The Big Picture

If you want every tool imaginable in one place Magic School is your playground.

If you want free, focused help cutting prep time and aligning lessons with standards then Khanmigo for Teachers is your jam.

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Final Take

Look, both tools are trying to fix a broken system where teachers are buried under 25 hours of work in a 24-hour day. Magic School says, “Here’s a thousand gadgets, go wild.” Khanmigo says, “Here’s a few sharp ones, and hey, they’re free.”

But here’s the twist: neither is the real hero. The real heroes are still the teachers showing up, doing the work, and keeping kids learning in a world that thinks AI can replace empathy. Spoiler alert: it can’t.

Until an app learns how to stop Bobby from flipping his Tech Deck on the lab table during silent reading, my money is still on you. 

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